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Workshop Brothers Specialty Coffee

Kylie Northover

Go-to dish: 'Hotnuts' (lemon curd hotcakes) served with seasonal fruit and mascarpone.
Go-to dish: 'Hotnuts' (lemon curd hotcakes) served with seasonal fruit and mascarpone.Wayne Taylor

Cafe$$

When brothers Brian, Jason and Nolan Taing decided to band together to open a "proper" coffee place in 2012, they spent eight months looking for a decent location, crying out for something more than a flat white.

With a pedigree earned at their parents' own cafe, Oak Room in Ashburton, the trio take their caffeine very seriously, and the forlorn spot they transformed near Glen Huntly train station quickly became a busy commuter stop.

With their own house blend (roasted by Axil), up to 10 different single origins from Monk Bodhi Dharma each day, and everything from espresso to every kind of filter, the cafe has lived up to its title.

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Workshop Brothers Specialty Coffee in Elsternwick.
Workshop Brothers Specialty Coffee in Elsternwick.Wayne Taylor

"But you've got to accompany it with good food," says youngest brother Brian. "I find a lot of places that have great coffee can lack on food a little bit; we're trying to have a balance of both."

Chef David Airoldi, originally from France, had been working at Dukes in Windsor, and knows his way around both.

Workshop's all-day menu means you can have your granola (house-made and terrifyingly healthy, with linseed, bee pollen, rice bran, cacao nibs, cranberries, coconut, almonds, seeds, natural yoghurt & banana, $12.90) or eggs and avo (with feta on quinoa sourdough, $15.90) or you can dive straight in at 8am and order the coconut crumbed chicken salad (with red and white cabbage slaw and rocket with caramelised pineapple dressing, $17.90) or even a dry rub lamb salad with spiced rubbed lamb backstrap, freekah, feta, pomegranate and a tahini dressing ($19.50).

The breakfast cassoulet is back just in time for winter.
The breakfast cassoulet is back just in time for winter.Wayne Taylor
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It's a quirky menu. "We've got your 'modern' Australian brekkies, which everyone likes, but with a French twist," says Brian. "There's always going to be a bit of a French taste in there, but every now and then David does some Asian fusion as well."

Just back for winter is the popular breakfast cassoulet (made with braised haricot beans, confit duck, smoked bacon, toulouse sausage and persillade,$18.90) and then there's the dish that everyone talks about – the hotnut: lemon curd hotcakes with house-made meringue, sour cherry coulis, orange mascarpone and toffee cherries ($16.90). Hardcore.

Aside from the more conventional quinoa and parmesan fritters (served with beetroot and orange, cumin, salmon gravlax, avocado, poached eggs and hollandaise, $17.90), the hotnut is Workshop's biggest seller.

"That's David's creation," says Brian. "I'd never seen anything like it before he created it! And it's really taken off. I think it's so popular because It's sweet and filling but not over-the-top."

It's the go-to dish for the camera wielding food bloggers. "We tend to get a lot of travellers here, from interstate and internationally," says Brian. "We actually get a lot of people from Singapore – I'm not exactly sure how they found out about us but obviously social media is working – and they want to try coffee and the hotnut. Everyone comes for the hotnut!"

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