Review Tuesday

Today I visited a new cafe, always an exciting event in my life, and liked it so much I decided on the spot to include café reviews in this, my new blog.

The reviews will target the child-friendliness of each café I visit and I warn all you café-owners - I will be unrelenting in my search for the perfect babycino/box of good quality toys ratio. High-quality coffees are a must, obviously, and if you really want to get on my good side, try serving raspberry and white chocolate muffins.

Anyway, so today I went to Our Kitchen Table in Malvern, a reasonably exxy Melbourne suburb. I think it is officially an Eastern suburb, anyone want to correct me? I am embarrassingly hopeless at directions. The café is on Wattletree Road, near the corner of High St, opposite Central Park. Lovely warm atmosphere with plenty of room for prams to manouver between tables. One of the larger communal tables was playing host to what looked to me like a Mothers' Group - good sign for child-friendliness. No toys that I could see, but there were plenty of interesting magazines to read. I chose the July edition of Notebook, a magazine I always pounce on in cafés as I like it but not enough to shell out for it.

Abi and I sat along the wall on comfy padded bench-style seating, which was perfect for her as she could sit like a big girl and I didn't have to worry about her falling off the side. We drooled over the treat cabinet for a while (merangues with chocolate and strawberries! Lemon curd and merangue cupcakes! Big, old fashioned lamingtons! Do I need to continue!?!) but were seduced into ordering the ricotta hotcakes with strawberries and lemon curd. Babycino and latte to begin.

Coffee; pretty good. Slightly bitter, possibly from over-packing, but nice flavour once Abi had added a charmingly misshapen sugar lump from the cute vintage bowl. Babycino came in an old flowery china cup and had a strawberry marshmallow included, which mean old mum whipped away.

Hotcakes came quickly and were huge. Generous serving of strawberries and a dollop of lemon curd all covered in a berry coulis. The lemon curd was a bit too sweet for me but everything else was yum as. Definitely worth the $13.50 but next time I think I'd see if I could just order two rather than the three that came on the plate.

Out of a possible rating of five babycinos I give Our Kitchen Table a solid three and a half. I will definitely be returning. Having the park just across the road is a bonus as you could get yummy take away stuff and then let the kids tire themselves out in the playground.

Must go and make dinner. Nothing very exciting just tuna pasta. Will include garlic toast so that Abi stays happily at the table. Thank you to the lovely readers who left comments on my first post, you gave me a lovely boost!