Crumpet, East Victoria Park

I’m sure you agree that it would be sacrilege to eat breakfast at a cafe called Crumpet that makes its own crumpets – and not order crumpets! We ordered a serve of crumpets with butter and honey(AU$3.50) to share. The crumpets were brought to our table very soon after we ordered (as speedily as you’d want the garlic bread to arrive at your table when dining in an Italian restaurant), and on that chilly Saturday morning, the warm smell of freshly toasted crumpets and honey was absolutely glorious.

Jac sliced the first crumpet into two, spreading butter and pouring honey over each half. You can order your crumpets with butter and Vegemite if you prefer savoury toppings to sweet.

A toasted homemade crumpet slathered with lashings of butter and honey may be one of the most perfect things ever. Crumpet’s crumpets don’t have the characteristic holes you get in commercially made crumpets, and they were a lot softer in texture too – but really nice.

I ordered a pot of English breakfast tea for one (AU$3.50) with soy milk (50 cents). Jac ordered an iced coffee (AU$5.00), which came in a spectacularly tall glass.

The iced coffee came with whipped cream and a big scoop of ice cream, and a sprinkling on top of fresh coffee beans, toffee chunks and what tasted like vanilla-flavoured rock sugar. Jac said the coffee itself was quite strong, but once you mixed it with the cream, ice cream and all those trimmings it was just perfect – sweet, cold and milky with delicious special crunchy bits.

At Crumpet, you can order eggs Benedict with leg ham (AU$12.50) or smoked salmon (AU$16.50) – Jac ordered the smoked salmon option. The salmon and poached eggs were served on a bed of fresh spinach leaves on top of a toasted English muffin, all smothered with a creamy dill and caper hollandaise. Dill and capers are, of course, traditional accompaniments to smoked salmon; with the leg ham option you get plain hollandaise.

I’d like to dedicate these smoked salmon eggs Benedict photos to my friend Charlene. :)

Jac declared she would definitely eat at Crumpet again.
Well, actually, the conversation went something like this:
TFP: So, would you eat at Crumpet again?
Jac: Hell, yeah!

I had the mushies on toast (AU$11.00) with a side order of bacon (AU$3.00). The sauteed sliced mushrooms were piled on top of garlic-rubbed ciabatta toast and served with lots of fresh rocket and crumbled feta. I thought the toast would be unpleasantly soggy underneath all those juicy mushrooms, but was surprised at how the ciabatta retained a lot of its toasty crunch. A garlic rub makes all the difference to savoury toast! Regular readers will know how much I love cooked spinach for breakfast – well, add fresh rocket to the list. The combination of mushrooms, toast, rocket, cheese and bacon was fantastic, in taste as well as texture.

I was really impressed with the bacon. Two enormous rashers with a yummy ratio of lean to fat. I’m pretty sure I told Jac a few too many times how impressed I was with the bacon.

Here’s the bacon from another angle. This bacon made me very happy.

Crumpet, we shall return!

UPDATE See my most recent review of Crumpet, published June 2011.