Marvellous Melbourne

No matter how short my Melbourne visits are, they never fail to be fruitful ones.

I can safely say that I've never eaten in the same Melbourne restaurant twice, thanks to friends who are either chefs or keen followers of food blogs.

This time it was made special because of Jia-Yi and Shannon.

To begin with, the weather yesterday was fantastic. Blue skies, cool breeze and a crisp morning freshness greeted me as I stepped out the hotel doors.


When the scenery looks this good, there's no need for a DSLR.

I took a slow walk across the Yarra River on the yellow bridge to get to Flinders Station, where Jia-Yi and I met.



We then trammed over to Flinders Lane to hunt down a bistro-cafe that had received good reviews on the internet - Cumulus Inc.



It had a very clean less-is-more concept to its set-up and a few unique dishes on its menu. Cumulus Inc. opens from breakfast all the way to 11pm. We were there at 9:30am and there still were people enjoying their cup of coffee before work.

I had Turkish baked eggs while Jia-Yi had the Cumulus Inc. breakfast set.


Cumulus Inc. Breakfast Set - Half-boiled egg, yoghurt with berries and rubharb, toasted bread, coffee/tea and orange juice.


Turkish Baked Eggs - Two eggs baked in a pan (yolk still runny) supported by a layer of spinach (I think) and chunky tomato puree. It came with three dollops of sour cream and a sprinkling of pine nuts. Just bursting with flavour. I had never had eggs like these before.



Lunch with Shannon and friends was at an Italian cafe called +39. I was still full from my very satisfying breakfast and opted for sweets while they had pizza.


Looks good, doesn't it? I wish I had the space to stomach it. I'm sure it was delicious, the plates were licked clean.


I had a dessert of poached pears over what seemed like the coffee liqueur mascarpone filling of a tiramisu. Quite lovely.

They didn't have much planned for the day except to run a few errands and shop, as what most students do on their day off. I tagged along.

Shannon needed to pick a few supplies for a wedding cake he was making and so we headed to a wholesale supermarket akin to Macro, where a membership is required for purchases and things there come in obscenely large quantities.




Just to prove my point about 'obscenely large quantities', here is a 1.5kg block of butter.