I live in an innercity area of Melbourne. I love the proximity to work, the relaxed culture. In the last 15-20 years it has changed from a largely working class area and has since been embraced by young professionals and students. With the changing demographic, cafes have appeared and I am spoilt for choice.
On Sunday morning I was meeting someone for breakfast, and decided to try Miss Marmalade, a cafe around the corner from home. I was a little nervous; while it has largely positive reviews, the few negative reviews are scathing. The cafe is cosy with an exposed brick wall.
I ordered a Soy Cafe Latte and the coffee was excellent. For breakfast, it happened that my breakfast companion and I both ordered the Farmers Market Breakfast. I was enticed by the description of “home made cornbread, hash potatoes, cherry tomatoes, a pick of market vegetables with poached egg, microherbs and avocado crush.”
I was delighted when the dish was presented. I’m tired of the common presentation of breakfast dishes where they are just placed on a plate. The vegetables, spinach, broad beans, peas, red and yellow peppers were fresh and cooked perfectly.
The dish was lovely. However the avocado was spread on top of the cornbread and I would have liked it chopped and incorporated with the vegetables. It was also a little lacking in flavour. The herbs, dill and parsley were sparse. The cornbread however was lovely.
My friend and I were still hungry and decided to share the Gingerbread Hotcakes with “poached fruit, Tahitian Vanilla Bean and maple mascarpone with chopped pistachios.”
The hotcakes were lovely and fluffy with a perfect addition of ginger. It was served with poached rhubarb, pear and blueberry’s. At three stacks the hotcakes are quite dense. More of the poaching syrup would have been nice to just cut through. The fruit was poached perfectly.
Overall a satisfactory breakfast! I will definately be returning in future, especially as it’s so close to home!
A Tale of Two Kitchens 
Hi Mel and Alex,
thank you very much for the feedback, we take it all on board and discuss blogs and posts with our staff. With regard to reviews, every venue gets good and bad. For us, late last year we copped the brunt of people upset that the cafe next door to us closed down without notice. If you don’t pay the rent landlords tend to become unhappy, it was nothing to do with us. Some of it was just nasty and completely untrue but there’s nothing you can do about it. We firmly believe that people vote with their feet, and as we have people queueing on the weekends for tables, we feel we must be doing alot more right than wrong.
Regards,
Miss M
Hi Tony,
I understand each reviewer has a personal bias and a number of different circumstances cloud the review.
I did notice that there was a queue for indoor tables!
Thank-you for your response – it is much appreciated.
Mel