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[title]Odd Culture Newtown has added an awesome new breakfast service, turning this local favourite into a morning, noon and night, all-day dining and drinking hotspot.
Launched in November last year, the venue has been Odd Culture Group’s biggest project to date and has fast become Newtown’s watering hole for the weird and wonderful. The two-level, hybrid space boasts a bar, restaurant, and now café, as well as an extensive bottle shop a couple of doors down - all centered around the exploration of fermentation in all its forms.
The menu is a far cry from your usual café offering with no smashed avo in sight. The dedicated chefs make as many elements as possible in house including the ‘Odd Cultured’ butter, bacon, ricotta, soft cheeses, jams and warm smoked trout.
Executive chef, James MacDonald, says of the new brekkie menu: “What sets our breakfast apart is that we are putting our unique Odd Culture spin on things and using techniques, textures and flavours honed during our lunch and dinner services.”
Charge up on cold brew by Mecca or Single Origin with a casual porridge with barley, sunflower seeds, brown sugar and cinnamon or grab something more substantial like buttermilk pancakes with banana and miso caramel which pay homage to head chef, Jesse Warkentin’s Canadian heritage. After something a little bit fancy? Check out the soft French-style omelette with kombu butter.
If you're nursing a hangover, the ‘Bacon Butty’ should do the trick. The double-layered white bread breakfast sandwich is made with crisp house-made bacon that has been dry-cured in salt, sugar and spices for five days before being gently smoked and slow-cooked for 12 hours, complete with a big dollop of tonkatsu sauce on the side to dip into. The blood pancake with fried egg and chilli maple has snuck in from the lunch and dinner menu, alongside smoked ocean trout with potato waffle, crème fraiche and soft egg, and the very macho steak and eggs with tomato salad and fermented red pepper butter.
General manager, Sam Paech (Baxter Inn, Frankie’s) has designed three boozy breakfast cocktails to round things out. The ‘Odd Cultured Bloody Mary’ carries on the venue’s overarching fermentation theme and is made using lacto-fermented tomatoes that have undergone a two-week spontaneous ferment. It’s then pureed into a Bloody Mary mix and served with vodka.
There will also be a boozy apple juice where guests can choose their poison from the house spirits on offer to mix in with freshly juiced apples, and a seasonal mimosa of prosecco and freshly juiced fruit depending on what's best on the day.