Il Melograno

"Ice-cream for breakfast?" as Helen Garner might write. "You must be kidding!"

Yes, Helen, ice-cream for breakfast, because Il Melograno is, after all, an artisan gelateria. Ice-cream first, breakfast (and lunch) second. Or the other way around, if you prefer.

Breakfast wasn't even part of the plan when Il Melograno opened last August, says owner Carl Fodera: artisan gelato was the main game – in flavours such as chocolate and rosemary (inspired by the rosemary-infused chocolate Fodera used to buy from a Trappist monastery in Rome) and Iranian pistachio (made with real crushed nuts, not pistachio paste) – as well as lunch and dinner.

But the demands of making gelato took over the kitchen in the afternoon, crowding out dinner, and people kept asking for breakfast. So Fodera obliged late last year.

The brunchy menu is overseen by young chef Caroline Pelzing. 

"We follow the same principle as with gelato," says Fodera. "We keep everything local, preservative-free and organic where we can, with a distinct Italian flavour."

That Italian flavour is more than apparent in baked eggs with tomato sughetto and pork sausage ($16.50). Hunks of sourdough bread form the base of this dish that's served in a mess-tin shaped ceramic cocotte. The bread soaks up the sauce, going deliciously squishy, while chunks of tasty fennel-infused sausage dot the tangy, tomatoey sughetto and a just-set egg perches on top, ready to melt into the saucy goodness. The flavours contrast nicely with chewy-salty slices of olive-studded sourdough in a paper bag on the side. The dish is sweet and savoury, nourishing and nurturing, and it's no surprise to learn it's based on a traditional Sicilian dish Fodera's grandmother used to make for him.

The Italian-ish breakfast bruschetta ($15) is a tasty serve of mixed heirloom tomatoes and a gently lemon-infused avocado smash on toasted sourdough, while truffled scrambled eggs ($14) are accompanied by spears of prosciutto-wrapped asparagus.

Poached eggs with crushed roasted beetroot, ricotta and minted peas ($19) is the most popular dish on the menu, and it's a lovely mix of creamy ricotta, a savoury-sweet beetroot relish, a salty hit of prosciutto and fresh minty peas along with the eggs on good sourdough toast.

Coffee is the wood-fire roasted Ricci Method (the roaster is in a glassed-in room at the back), and apart from the usual toasty espressos and chocolatey milk-based coffees, there's some edgy cold coffee ($6). Try the jasmine cold drip, made with a jasmine pearl tea infusion instead of water: it's like a cold coffee liqueur with a deep, fragrant bitterness, as if you were sipping some secret-recipe amaro in an Apennine mountain village.

And the breakfast ice-cream? That's the baked pancakes with char-grilled stone fruit and spiced plum sughetto ($16), which is topped with a scoop of fior di latte gelato that's like a mouthful of fresh, chilly school milk: nothing wrong with that, Helen.