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The Premises

Nina Rousseau

Contemporary$$

ALEX Andersen and Kate Holloway were so focused on finding the right site for their spiffy, coffee-focused cafe that they forgot to think of a name. So "The Premises" stuck, a first-time venture for the young couple, now open four weeks.

It's a quirky V-shaped layout, with two street fronts — one overlooking the train line on leafy Bellair Street, the other on Macaulay Road. The site had been vacant for six months before they took possession and it took three months to whip it into shape.

They scrubbed and stripped, taking it back to a bare canvas, removing wallpaper, knocking out a wall, dismantling counters, and ripping up two layers of flooring.

In its place stands a fresh and airy room, with rustic timber fittings, crisp white walls, and flashes of colour.

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All the tables – bar three old school desks – were custom-built by Andersen and his dad Stephen ("a good bonding exercise", according to Alex), using reclaimed mountain ash floorboards, sourced from their home town of Albury-Wodonga.

The chairs are smart with swivel backs, colour-matched to the green tiles and the oversized metal light-fittings, which were salvaged from tennis courts in Benalla.

In Melbourne's high coffee stakes, The Premises delivers. Andersen has worked with Mark Dundon — from back in the days of Ray and in all his businesses inclusive of Seven Seeds — and considers him a mentor.

Here, Seven Seeds' House Espresso is the main blend in the La Marzocco espresso machine and there's a rotating single-origin, such as a creamy Kenyan gachami, sweet and "rhubarby". Pour-over paper filter coffee is on offer, the delicate, almost tea-like brew best drunk black. Iced coffee comes strong and sweet with vanilla ice-cream and a three-bean garnish. Take-home beans cost $11 for 250 grams.

Holloway's nickname, at 29, is "Nana Kath" because of her love of making preserves. Nana's tomato chutney is for sale ($8.50), as is her chocolate brownie, a mousse-like rectangle with crunch from whole roasted hazelnuts. She cooks, and is responsible for, the brunch menu, a one-pager with influences from the Middle East and the Med.

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The Russian salad is a smart little dish, an almost ploughman's brunch platter of free-range egg salad with lots of dill and homemade aioli, three juicy pieces of Tasmanian smoked salmon, three bits of ciabatta toast, a long half-gerkhin, and a lemon wedge for spritzing.

Pork neck is roasted for six hours then pulled apart to make "pulled pork", served with a tasty mustard slaw and green apple (fetchingly spiced with chilli and fennel).

If that sounds too heavy, the top-notch fruit salad is a colourful bowl of in-season fruit — the best cuts of mango, strawberry, watermelon, bright with green mint, and with a hint of rosewater and lemon syrup.

Or bugger going healthy — a syrupy half-pear is embedded in the top (or is it the bottom?) of an upside-down pear and caramel cake, with a big dollop of spiced mascarpone on the side. All nanas love a bit of cake now and then.

nrousseau@theage.com.au 

 

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