Vicinity Bar & Dining (breakfast)

As breakfast spots go, Vicinity is decidedly glamorous. We are seated at a long, chunky wooden table on leather benches and pouffes beside tall, chainmail curtains near a bar adorned with sassily lit high-end wine bottles.

Outside, beyond huge glass windows and doors and beneath wide awnings, fellow diners lounge on sun-dappled padded banquettes beside mini fireplaces.

A nooky, pastel-painted corner café this is not.

Vicinity is vast but not un-cosy, as areas have been divided up via a clever arrangement of seating, lighting and curtains. It is almost difficult choosing a seat, such is the variety.

What is not difficult is the menu which inspires relief from all at the table because it only features seven items. And that's including the toast, muffins and pastries.

No one has to wade through five kinds of egg dishes or fret over the many "extras" needed to construct a breakfast.

Toast comes as sourdough, rye or spiced fruit, the latter a sweet and nicely sharp loaf that soaks up some fine Pepe Saya butter and bears a lovely crunch.

We also order the Farmer Jo Muesli which is enormous, a hefty bowl of toasted oats with cinnamon, burnt fig, yoghurt and berries. It doesn't come with milk so seems dry. After a tricky period trying to catch a waiter's eye, a jug of full cream is dispatched swiftly.

A bacon and egg roll is voted the table's favourite dish. A whacking great sourdough roll is generously layered with a fried egg, house-made maple bacon and smoked aioli. It is fat, fabulous and oozing with eggy goodness.

Smashed avocado toast, a slab of sourdough piled with softly pummelled avocado and Persian feta, is also excellent, partly because the toast is not so crisp that biting it flings all the ingredients back onto the plate.

Eggs benedict is a seductive sight, perfectly wobbly poached eggs on toast with fat ribbons of smoked salmon wrapped around them with a sprig of cress as adornment. This is wolfed down in minutes, pausing only for a smoked salmon taste-test by the small girl at the table who declares it "nice fish".

Throughout our stay, staff are generally attentive and some extremely friendly, taking great pains to offer crayons and paper to the small girl and deftly removing plates and sliding in coffees without us noticing.

Our flat whites are good, strong and creamy and a tall, freshly pressed apple juice is the kind of green that says organic, vitamin-packed and liver-cleansing. So everyone murmurs approval.

The cook among us is so intrigued by what she has eaten she asks to view the dinner menu. If we stick around long enough, gypsy folk band the Button Collective will play on the deck as the afternoon sun sets through the surrounding trees.

And we could try out the six other seating precincts and the splendid-looking bar's supplies in this big and beautiful place. But it is still morning. There is a super-hardware store to get lost in down the road and our budget has maxed out.

Nevertheless, at the till we add some takeaway Black Poison chocolate brownies and rhubarb muffins and vow to return, morning, noon or night.

THE LOW-DOWN

THE PICKS 

Egg and bacon roll, eggs benedict, fruit toast

THE COFFEE 

Di Bella

THE LOOK 

Opulent, remodelled warehouse

THE SERVICE 

Plentiful, professional but sometimes distracted

THE VALUE 

Very good - generous serves.