The Silver Spoon. 3 October

The Silver Spoon promotes itself as the fine dining experience in Vic Park. It's pretty terrific, but also amusing, because it isn't located in either of the cafe strips on Albany Hwy, but is plonked in between the two, near a large, busy roundabout, squeezed between a tent shop and a 24 hour deli and across the road from a used car dealer. Location leaves a bit to be desired, but you can quite easily forget the location when you enter the tastefully decorated restaurant. Grey walls, groovy silver light fittings and a giant silver spoon on the wall make the room feel good. We'd had dinner there a few weeks earlier and had been impressed (especially by the giant wine glasses), but agreed with several people who have noted that their serving sizes are small. We were keen to see what they could do for breakfast.

We'd met the manager of the Silver Spoon when we'd eaten dinner there and were impressed by his vision for the suburb, his youth and enthusiasm and the fact that we share a birthday (although I suspect he's somewhat younger than this blogger).

So, breakfast. I ordered bacon and eggs and a camomile tea, he ordered the white chocolate pancakes with berry coulis and cream and a flat white and we made a special order for the three year old (just one egg, a rasher of bacon and a small serve of toast). They took the special order without blinking or looking like they were going to pass out, which tends to inspire confidence.

First came our drinks. I was pleased to see a teapot, but really really disappointed to see a tea bag sticking out of said tea pot. Come on! The shabby place up the road can manage leaf tea!! What's going on? The coffee was excellent. Our meals arrived and the presentation was great. The bacon and eggs were on a stylish rectangular plate, the pancakes looked stunning. As I mentioned before, a common criticism of the Silver Spoon is small serving sizes, and indeed our servings did seem small, but no one was hungry afterwards, so perhaps it's not a huge problem, although when you're paying higher prices you do expect larger servings.

The food, despite the small servings, was excellent. Better than excellent actually. The fried eggs were perfect, the bacon was generous and crisp and the toast (although small slices) was crusty, tasty and most certainly not sliced white bread. The pancakes were out of this world. Sweet, fluffy and perfectly cooked with a lovely coulis that spread pink and red colours all over the plate. Fantastic stuff.

I was a bit worried about whether kids would be welcome at a slightly swankier establishment, but we were offered a high chair for the baby as soon as we arrived and they were more than happy to put together a smaller order for the three year old, so full marks there.

It all came to $47, which is more expensive than most other places, but not by a massive amount. All up, a great experience on a sunny Sunday morning.

Try it. I wouldn't recommend sitting outside, unless you love views of roundabouts and car yards, but sitting inside it is a more than pleasant breakfast experience.

Score - 4.5 eggs.