Friday, December 9, 2016

Dining with the Pair: Vans, Cottesloe

Walk into Vans and you'll see that this is not the usual Napoleon St café.
Fake butterflies hang off wires stretched across the ceiling in an unexpected decor move and the breakfast menu continues this subtle otherworldly vibe.  It has an interesting mix of spicy, sweet and classic brekky dishes with Asian flavours worked in such as mango and coconut chia pudding, son in law eggs and a Indonesian fried egg dish with lap cheong and sambal.



Our food:
Buttermilk pancakes with apple and strawberry compote and whipped maple butter ($19)
The pancakes unfortunately lacked flavour and were drenched in maple syrup. Now I'm not averse to a good drizzle of maple syrup but there was so much syrup that the pancakes had begun to disintegrate in its sogginess. The sweet strawberry purée and honeycomb butter made this a sugar overload even to me and my love of sweets. A small carafe of maple syrup or perhaps some cream instead of the purée would have toned down its sweetness.


Mushrooms on toast with Fremantle life cycle mushrooms, goats curd, 63 degree egg, truffle oil and grilled gluten free sourdough ($24)
The mushroom dish was executed well and had a good combination of textures with the crusty bread. They thoughtfully supplied us with a sharper knife for this dish to cut through the harder sourdough.


Open egg white omelette with stir fried blue swimmer crab, broccolini, pea tendrils, coriander, green chilli nah jim ($26)
The whipped egg white elevated the normally hearty omelette into a very light and fluffy dish. The crab meat portions were generous and well spread so you got a good chunk of juicy crab in each bite. The cilantro, chilli and oil gave off Thai flavours but perhaps a lighter hand on the oil would have made this perfect as it got slightly too greasy near the end.

We didn't take photos of our drinks but the hot chocolate would have been a real winner if only it had been served at a hotter temperature. The milk was not hot enough to melt the dark chocolate and marshmallow leaving a clump of solid chocolate at the bottom. The chai latte was brewed with real chai tea and unlike the majority of tea leaf based lattes it actually had a good balance of mellow sweetness provided by the honey.


Overall
The service although slow was friendly. Not including the pancakes, Vans is worthy of another visit but I'd probably stick with the savoury options.
Dishes for next time: Roast cauliflower and manchego fritters with romesco sauce, soft poached egg, endive and avocado.
Rating: 6/10.

Until next time my fellow foodies,

Serena


Notes
~ Breakfast, lunch and dinner available
~ Vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options are available


Vans
Open 7 days a week
1 Napoleon St, Cottesloe
Vans Cafe Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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