The best bonkers breakfasts in Melbourne

Where to order it: The Premises

This warm and bustling Kensington café is crammed inside and out most mornings with locals taking advantage of The Premises' consistently excellent coffee and chef Bec Kaye's inventive brunch options. The 'bellair eggs' with felafel, hummus and cucumber and walnut tarator on Lebanese flat bread is consistently cited as one of Melbourne's best breakfasts, but Time Out Melbourne is quite partial to the pumpkin pie French toast with baked custard, cinnamon mascarpone, pretzel crunch and maple bacon (pictured above).

Where to order it: Easey's

Should you eat fried chicken that’s coated in crushed-up Frosties and deep-fried strawberry Pop Tarts? Definitely not. Can you? Yes siree. The patty-mad burger man behind Jimmy’s Burgers – James Hurlston – opened Easey’s earlier this year, which counts a Hitachi train carriage perched on the rooftop of a Collingwood office block as one of its dining areas. From 11am on, you can stake out the carriage and enjoy your doctor-unapproved breakfast with a $6 burger and a side of city views. This dish is nuts at any time of the day; for maximum bonkers points, have it first thing. 

Where to order it: Middle Fish

‘Omelette’ by name, amazing seafood-pancake-type creation by nature. Middle Fish's hoy tod arrives steaming hot, so you get aromatic wafts of the sea before you’ve even tasted the fat whole mussels within. There’s a little dish of house-made Sriracha sauce and a heap of pickled bean shoots and carrots on the side, but your attention will be focussed mainly on those smokey, salty, mussel-studded omelette slices, which are pale-gold and soft in the middle, crispy brown on the corners. Forget tea or coffee: order a silver goblet of tooth-cringingly sweet Thai iced tea. 

Where to order it: Archie's All Day

OK, so salmon and poached eggs isn’t exactly an envelope-pushing combo, but throwing in miso, seaweed butter-smeared rye croutons, pickled cucumber and daikon – then scattering the whole thing with a dark-green dusting of nori – is. The salmon is cured to succulent perfection, with a delicate miso sweetness that’s nicely offset by the vinegary cucumber and daikon, and the richness of the golden-yolked poached eggs. Re: seaweed butter – we want more.

Chef Nick Sawle says…
“I wanted a fish dish on the breakfast menu that wasn’t smoked salmon or trout – something a bit off-centre. We lightly sear the salmon after curing it to bring out the miso, give the fish a glaze and intensify the flavour. To balance it out, the daikon and pickled cucumber add that vinegary hit. The seaweed butter is made with dried nori, kombu and wakame, which we steep in water for 48 hours before we drain it and pulse it through butter.”