Chato

The tide of – what is it, change? – is rising into the 900 shop numbers along High Street, Thornbury, and lapping at the shores of traffic-clogged Bell Street. Whether it will cross that Rubicon depends on the northward pressure of real estate prices.

The tide has brought the neighbourhood a content-marketer's name – "Thornbury Heights" – and many good things: among them Umberto, a 21st-century take on an old-school espresso bar by the son of an old-school espresso barfly; The Moor's Head, a creative middle-eastern riff on the new-school pizzeria; Perimeter, Melbourne's best little artists' bookseller and publisher; Lords of the North, a barber's shop where you can get your moustache waxed and your beard trimmed;  and Ampersand, a minimal, hip cafe where the minimally hip laptop away their creative afternoons.

It's also brought Chato, a smart-looking hybrid of cafe, tapas bar and Spanish restaurant.

The force behind Chato is chef Maria Echevarria-Lang. She started Caffe e Cucina​ with Maurice Terzini  in 1988, and also owned Ramblas in Toorak Road and Lorca​ in Centre Place. Now,  she and partner Jenny Echevarria-Lang have pitched up with Chato in their own northside neighbourhood.

The daytime menu starts out looking cafe-familiar with bircher muesli, porridge with poached fruits and eggs any way you like 'em, before taking a sharp turn into Spain with dishes such as Flamenca (eggs in a tomato and chorizo ragout with shaved serrano ham) and Carmen Sevilla (toasted baguette rubbed with tomato and olive oil and served with manchego​ cheese and serrano ham).

Torrijas​ is a Spanish Easter favourite – slices of bread soaked in milk, orange juice or red wine, dipped in egg and fried. Here it appears as three slices of brioche loaf, egg-dipped, fried and heavily scented with rosewater and cinnamon. They're served with a pot of yoghurt, a pour of maple syrup and a pair of poached beurre bosc pears, a fragrant and tasty take on French toast.

More savoury is La Bomba, a pancake infused with the vegetal flavours of roasted cauliflower, piled up with sauteed porcini and shiitake mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, sliced avocado, with a splodge of romesco and a poached egg to top it off: a grown-up alternative to sweet-tooth pancake breakfasts.

The highlights for lunch are the menu of the day – $19.99 for three courses - or the rice of the day. In Spain, says Maria Echevarria-Lang, everywhere from the humblest bar to the swankiest hotel will offer a menu de dia. On one visit the blackboard featured quail dismembered, grilled on little skewers until the skin was nicely charred and the meat was sweet and tender, served on a pile of sauteed spinach; followed by an Atlantic salmon fillet, crisp on the outside and sashimi-pink in the middle – again, served on sauteed spinach. The third course was a cinnamon and orange-infused flan: Spanish for creme caramel.

Another day the offer might be fat little coarse-grained chorizo wrapped in slices of potato and fried, a terracotta dish of a simple stew of tender pork, and leche frita – tasty, oozy deep-fried cuboids of Spanish milk pudding flavoured with cardamom.

For 20 bucks it's not bad, though for an Australian palate and diet I reckon it needs carbs and fresh vegetables – maybe a slice of that crusty baguette and a tiny tomato salad?

Late in the week the tapas, raciones​ and a dinner menu come out. You could piece together a reasonably priced dinner with a mix of tapas – prawns in bubbling, garlicky oil, deep-fried cauliflower, a lamb shashlik  – but mains like a Catalan seafood casserole or the classic paella ($26.90 a head for two) might stretch the budget.​

Do…try a chato: a flight of five Spanish wines or sherry with matching tapas
Don't…miss the sports-newspaper wallpaper in the loo
Dish…Fideua de Gandia, a traditional short noodle dish with seafood, $21.90 
Vibe... Neighbourhood bar-cafe