After a tip-off from a fellow blogger, Catty, I decided to head to Sparrow’s Nest for a lunch catch-up. It was a miserable, rainy Melbourne day that felt decidedly like Winter (even though it’s still only Autumn) so I wasn’t tempted to straw far from work. As we’d gotten there quite early (1210), we managed to snare one of the brightly lit window tables in this cosy little cafe.
Sparrow’s Nest
It didn’t take us long to select our meals from the array of focaccias, salads, pies and soup. Cold days leave me with carbohydrate cravings (must be a store-energy-for-the-winter-months thing), so I decided to go with the Roasted Vegetable and Goat’s Cheese Focaccia. Honestly though, it was the Goat’s Cheese that got me – I can’t go past the stuff and indeed, was very disappointed that Merideth Dairy was closed last time I was down on the Mornington Peninsula.
Roasted Vegetable and Goat’s Cheese Focaccia
I’m drifting though. The focaccia itself was brilliantly satisfying in terms of both quality and quantity. With soft white bread was generously smeared with the slightly salty goat’s cheese, then filled to the brim with perfectly roasted eggplant, capsicum and pumpkin. The accompanying salad was uninspiring, but frankly I didn’t care. The focaccia itself would have been enough.
My friend on the other hand went for the vegetable soup, and a pie.
Vegetable Soup
The soup was delicious and nourishing, and the accompanying sourdough by Dench Bakers was very good (and he’d just gotten back from a year in Japan, so it must have been mind-blowing for him), but unfortunately it took a good 30 minutes for the pie to arrive. It hadn’t been heated properly so they had to return it to the oven. The staff were apologetic and surprisingly, didn’t charge us for it (although my friend did leave an $8 tip because it wasn’t all that much of an inconvenience). Alas, I didn’t manage to take a photo of it when it did arrive as he ravenously ate all of it. Must have been good in that case!
Sparrow’s Nest is a nice little cafe that has a steady stream of customers for both coffee and food. It serves good, simple, food and has great service, and is definitely somewhere I’d return to, especially for my next focaccia fix.
Sparrow’s Nest
95 Queen Street, Melbourne
Mon-Fri 7am-4pm
