Good to see you café lovers!
Welcome back to Cards and Cafés! I hope that you’ve been well and that you’ve been out there exploring some Melbourne cafés. Remember to leave your thoughts and suggestions down in the comments section, as I’m always looking for a new café to try.
Recently I went out for breakfast with my dad and a couple of our family friends and we decided to try Red Brick Café in Surrey Hills. I had seen their menu online and thought that this would be a great café to try with a larger group.
This local café on Mount Albert road seems to be the local hot spot on weekends, with a large number of families going there for their weekend treat. We found that by 10:30 on a Saturday morning most of the tables were taken. So I would highly recommend that if you want to visit this café on the weekends you should get there before 10am to ensure you get a table.
FOOD & DRINKS
Red Brick Café has a large menu with a great mix of both sweet and savoury dishes, which means that there is something for everyone. We felt that the prices were about average and were similar to what you would pay in other cafés around Melbourne.
The following menu photos were taken at the end of April 2016 and might have changed.
I ordered my usual latte; it came out very quickly, probably within about 3 minutes of ordering it. The latte was hot, but I felt that it could have been a bit stronger. But it still had a great flavour and I really enjoyed it on that cold Melbourne morning. It was also a perfect size and I loved the shape of the glass, it looks better than the normal latte glasses that other cafés use.
Coffee rating: 3/5 
My Dad ordered an English breakfast tea. He said that he wished it could have been stronger, he feels that most cafés don’t put enough tea mix in the teapot. But he loved that it came in a red teapot and had a red cup and saucer, which followed the red theme of the café.
Tea rating: 3/5
I ended up ordering the zucchini and sweet corn fritters which was served with avocado & feta salsa, smoked salmon and a poached egg. I thought that the fritters themselves were delicious! They had a beautiful rich flavour with both the zucchini and sweet corn flavours complementing each other. There was a perfect balance of both vegetables and gave the fritter an excellent flavour. The fitters were also season well and cooked perfectly. I thought that the avocado and the poached egg were excellent choices to add to the dish. The smoothness of the avocado against the richness of the fritter paired perfectly together, with the texture of the egg just adding an extra element of surprise.
I’m not normally a huge fan of smoked salmon, but I thought that it was something different and it added an interesting flavour to the dish.
I would definitely eat this dish again and would recommend it others.
My Dad ordered the croque – monsieur, which was filled with shaved ham, Dijon mustard and gruyère on ciabatta topped with béchamel and grilled gruyère and served with Red Brick tomato relish. Even though it didn’t look overly appealing and appetising, he said that it had a great flavour. He said that it was very rich and that if it had been any bigger he wouldn’t have been able to finish it. He said that the Red Brick tomato relish definitely made the dish and without it the dish would have been quite boring.
Finally our family friends Ting, Steve and John all had the baked eggs which was served in spiced tomato, mushroom and spinach with a slice of ciabatta toast. They all said that the dish was a good size and that the eggs were cooked perfect. But they all felt that the spiced tomato was too over powering and took away from the hero of the dish, which were the eggs. One of them even saying it tasted like ratatouille and that’s not something he wanted to eat in the morning. But they were all glad that they tried it and thought that it was something different then ordering the boring bacon and eggs on toast.
ENVIRONMENT & SERVICE
There are quite a number of tables inside this café and a hand full outside. This café isn’t as cosy and comfortable as other cafés I’ve been to in the past. The tables are quite small and the chairs are rather uncomfortable. It’s not the café you want to sit for hours in drinking coffee, eating your food and relaxing.
The decor inside the café is fairly boring and they have no artwork or anything interesting to look at other than a red brick wall. Don’t get me wrong, I love exposed brick but this café needs something else to make it look more interesting and have something that customers will remember.
The employees are all relatively friendly and were very accommodating and allowed us to move two tables together to allow for more room while we ate our breakfast. It was rather difficult to have all five of us on a small square table, so having that extra one made the world of difference.
You can see that this is a family friendly place and one that all the locals seem to go to. A number of families came in while we were there and what seemed to be like regular customers and they spoke to the owner like they were friends.
I probably won’t rush back to this café, but it is a good café for a family looking for a good little breakfast spot if they are living in the Surrey Hills or Camberwell area.
OTHER INFORMATION ABOUT RED BRICK CAFÉ
Address: 215 Mont Albert Road, Surrey Hills, Melbourne, (Vic)
Map: here
Phone: (03) 9836 0009
Operating Hours:
Monday –Friday –7:00 am- 4:00 pm
Saturday –Sunday – 8:00 am – 3:00 pm
CAFÉ RATING = 6.5/10
Have you visited Red Brick Café before? Tell me what you thought of it. Do you have any suggestions of cafe’s to visit?
Comment down below, I’m always looking for somewhere new to try.
Until next time,
Happy eating
-Kim
Leave a Reply