Page 18 - foodservice magazine Feb 2019

18
TPRAODFEILTEALK
“That's the challenge with a good brekky menu, you have to toe the line with a couple of the classics done really well, but you also need to continue progressing and evolving.”
From top: Three Blue Ducks Bronte. Photography: Nikki To. Duck noodle soup at Boon Cafe.
by a Swiss doctor in 1900 who wanted to ensure his hospital patients had enough vitamins in their diets. The popularisation of national icon smashed avo
is credited to chef and prolific restaurateur Bill Granger, who put it on his menu at Sydney cafe Bills in 1993. These classics have seen innumerable adaptations, but are still fundamentally
the same as they were at their inceptions.
At Palisa Anderson’s Thai diner Boon Cafe in Haymarket, smashed avo is spiked with fish sauce. On the morning menu, Anderson crosses traditional food from northern Thailand (where her mother grew up), with western elements. During the day, sai ua, a housemade lemongrass and pork sausage, is sandwiched in sourdough bread with herb salad and a boiled egg. But despite the several familiar western breakfast cues, Boon also introduces diners to pan- Asian breakfast stalwarts like congee and beef broth.
Anderson says breakfast- dining culture in Australia is entirely different to most countries around the world.
“There's a culture of rising early [in South East Asia]. You go to Thailand and everyone's up early because everyone has to make a living. Workers are up and they eat something really fast on the go,” says Anderson, and rising earlier means more demand for variety earlier. “The idea of having a broth for breakfast seems really radical here but it's actually not, Asians have been doing that forever.”
Sydneysiders gladly slurp Vietnamese pho, Thai khao soi or Sichuan hot pot for dinner, but few are in the habit of branching out to non-western cuisines for breakfast.
Breakfast dining has become a luxury commodity
in Australia, not just the
quick source of protein once depended upon to start a strenuous day. Diners in capital cities are lucky to have access to beautiful food of countless cuisines – in Sydney's inner- city suburb of Haymarket alone, you'll find some of the city's best Cantonese, Nepalese and Malaysian food, just a
few steps apart. While this globalisation of flavour has swept all levels of casual to fine dining, breakfast is still the least culturally-diverse meal
of the day.
But that doesn’t mean the meal is stagnant; tastes are changing as Allen said, but slowly. Japanese is perhaps the first Asian cuisine to gain a foothold.
Sydney’s Devon Cafe’s most popular menu item is not eggs and bacon, but a dish combining seared salmon, miso, koshihikari rice and egg, inspired by a breakfast dish that owner Zachary Tan ate in Japan.
“Some people just do not want to play roulette with their breakfast choices,” says Tan. But the cafe, which opened in 2013, has been