Dead Man Espresso

Dead Man Espresso

35 Market Street

South Melbourne

9686 2255

I enjoy a good cup of coffee, a few of the cafes around Melbourne serve some of the best coffee in the nation. On a particularly sunny day, Daz and I got together with Agnes and Alastair from Off the Spork and Agnes' brother Pat. To be honest we decided to go to Dead Man Espresso because of all the hype surrounding their coffee, yes I was totally lured in by all the talk. For me the coffee was not impressive, by I was pleasantly surprised by the food. The fresh flavours danced on my palate and I quickly forgot my disappointment regarding the coffee.

We ordered from the breakfast menu and got the "BLT" pork belly and spinach puree on brioche with gazpacho and the Crumpets with smoke salmon, mango and avocado salsa and orange sauce.

The BLT was pretty delicious. The brioche was buttery and fluffy, just like good brioche should be and the pork belly within was quite tasty. It had been cooked nicely so the pork was quite soft and broke apart easily with the very soft bread. I remember looking over at Daz's plate thinking "boy that looks like a big serve" then diverted my eyes to my own plate of food. I looked back at his plate hoping to score a second bite, but it was gone! Slow eaters are losers in our family, and I got the short end of the stick on this occasion. Daz's only negative comment on the dish was that the gazpacho tasted a bit like canned tomato juice, I didn't get to try it so can't comment.

I had the crumpets, I couldn't go past the smoked salmon. I hadn't had breakfast so the crumpets were pretty appealing to me, why not sneak a breakfast item in at any occasion? I try to work porridge and pasta into the same dish, but it hasn't scored any fans yet. So back to the crumpets. I adored the mango and orange sauce over the salad, it add some sweetness and a bit of zing, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The smoked salmon was thankfully well done, sliced a little thicker than normal and not greasy at all....unlike supermarket packet stuff.....there I said it. The crumpets were an item of discussion, to me they looked alot more like english muffins rather than the traditional crumpets I'm used to. Agnes suggested they might be a crumffin......a cross between a crumpet and a muffin, then I suggested it might be a muppet.......that didn't quite make sense, so we agreed to stick to crumffin.

I'll definitely be back to give the lunch menu a crack.