Footscray
77 Charles st Seddon
Seddon, VIC 3011
www.chicco.net.au
A very lazy start to ANZAC Day meant we were too late to order at our original (usual) brunch venue. Around the corner, we saw that Touk’s has made way for Chicco, so it was a good time to give it a try.
The place has certainly been given a facelift since Touk days, with clever glass bowls suspended from hanging-basket holders in place of lampshades, and chairs and cushions covered with the rough hessian of a coffee bean sack. We sat at the window and surmised that at least some of the staff had survived the name change: there were certainly one or two familiar faces still.
Breakfast is served until 3.30pm which is reasonably civilised. I didn’t spell out my tea order as carefully as I usually do, and disappointingly my request for half-strength tea was (yet again) interpreted as a request for double the water. It never ceases to amaze me that a city bordering on the obsessive about coffee can be so dismissive with their tea drinkers. Fancy loose-leaf tea and funky teapots do not a satisfactory tea experience make, and too many tea leaves standing for too long is just as offensive as burnt espresso.
Rant over.
I chose the baked beans on sourdough with spinach and feta pesto and caramelised onion. O chose his usual: poached eggs, with sides of bacon and smoked salmon. My baked beans dish was certainly a substantial dish and took some getting through. The beans were home made and delicious although I do prefer mine a little more tomatoey. The spinach and feta pesto, slathered on the toast before the beans were added, was perfectly tasty but to my mind did little to add to the overall dish. I’d have been happier without it to be honest although it didn’t ruin my breakfast.
O’s meal was pretty straightforward and nothing out of the ordinary, although his green tea was also overly-generously endowed with tea leaves. The other lunch offerings were more or less “one of each”: one chicken, one fish, one sausage, one steak, one pasta and one polenta (both vegetarian), and a handful of baguette options.
At a tad under $40 for two, it is a little cheaper than our usual haunt, Cafe Le Chien, but I am not sure it is as cosy (this place always felt a but cavernous to me) and the menu items aren’t sufficiently different or of a higher quality to entice me away from my comfort zone.
