Caring Coffee {Review of Streat Cafe, Flemington}

My morning coffee helps homeless youth get their lives back on track.

How many of us can say that?

Streat is a social enterprise that kicked off in Melbourne in 2008 using it's cafes, catering kitchen and coffee roastery to train and mentor homeless and disadvantaged youth for careers in hospitality. That such a thing even exists is more than fabulous, but that the food and coffee is so damn good that you would go there anyway, is pure magic.

I have been a fan since I first moved into the area of the Flemington cafe. We always buy our ground coffee for home use from Streat and have had excellent food on the rare occasion we go out for breakfast. I decided to write this review after noticing that there weren't any recent blog posts on Urbanspoon and despite the fact that it has a 92% rating it is never as full as it should be given the quality.

We started with coffees

Smooth and rich and just the right temperature, this is the kind of brew Melbourne is famous for.

Deciding what to eat here is always a challenge- the options all sound so delicious.  I debated for a long time over whether to go sweet- brioche and strawberry french toast with white chocolate and pistachio ganache and strawberry and basil coulis- sounds so good!

But ended up with a savoury choice of 'Breakfast in Bagel'

Also known as breakfast in heaven.  I am fussy about smoked salmon, I don't like it when it feels smoky and greasy in your mouth. This stuff was so fresh, light and tender, complemented by rich cream cheese, lovely lovely beetroot (never ever write-off beetroot until you have tasted really good home pickled beetroot, it stomps all over the canned variety), nicely tangy dill salsa verde and a perfectly toasted pumpernickel bagel.

 It also allowed me to be quite tactile with my breakfast, creating different flavour combinations

The Bookworm had 'Breakfast in Bengal'

A massive fan of pakoras (vegetables in a seasoned chickpea batter and deep-fried), he has not found many Indian restaurants that do good ones. Streat outdid themselves here, I even had a touch of food envy. Served with perfectly poached eggs, wilted spinach, eggplant kasundi and homemade paneer, it was such a perfectly balanced dish- I was very lucky to get a taste before he gobbled it up.

The service was friendly, and efficient. When you consider that there might be new staff in training you don't mind waiting for food, but honestly we never have waited long for anything here and the staff have always been well-presented and friendly.

And of course we picked up a bag of coffee to take home.

As we left we saw the most amazing looking Pork Belly sliders making their way to a table. I think I might have to return for lunch soon.