Melbourne cafe dwellers queue for life in the breakfast lane
There should be a breakfast dish called "The queue" to reflect the enforced pastime of waiting and waiting at cafes for the first meal of the day.
People need to eat to "break" the "fast" but they are compelled to worship coffee blessed by monks at high altitude and milk of the moment – almond – while savouring fancier food than bacon and eggs.
Putting your name on a list is part of the ritual. Uber-popular cafe Top Paddock in Richmond resembles a daytime nightclub with clipboard-holding staff doubling as crowd controllers to manage the breakfasters swarming outside. The sound of tummies rumbling isn't just about hunger pangs but waiting up to an hour for a table.
The ascension of breakfast as an occasion began about 2007 when the global financial crisis made going out for dinner a luxury. Now, it's "going out for breakfast" or brunch and it remains an affordable way to catch up with friends or have a business meeting without losing oneself in a boozy lunch.
Breakfast will be elevated to a silver platter when Salvatore Malatesta, the owner of St Ali and food futurist, introduces a breakfast degustation in January with a "degustation room" for 10 people.
This theatrical experience won't be 12 courses but a more modest six to eight because "Mr Full of Beans" believes it makes more sense to have a procession of dishes in the morning so you can burn them off.
The South Melbourne coffee shrine celebrates its 10th birthday in March and has been part of the evolution of breakfast into restaurant dining.
"Breakfast isn't a nutrition-driven exercise any more; it's an outing," Mr Malatesta said. "Ten years ago, breakfast was a toasted ham and cheese focaccia, and Bircher muesli."
Now it's an offal tasting plate with pig's head croquettes and it's centre stage in the $20 set menu "Breakfast Club" for The Age Good Food Month.
"Pigging out" continues at Auction Rooms in North Melbourne with a pressed pork shoulder served with trimmings and Kenyan coffee called Kiangoi from the Rung'eto Farmer's Cooperative that has notes of forest berries, lime, cocoa and rose.
Owner Andrew Kelly excels in serving coffee while you wait for more coffee at his takeaway outlet called Counter across the road. You see, the breakfast phenomenon created demand for a shorter queue before the longer queue.
"We wanted the locals to have a place to get a fast coffee," Mr Kelly said.
He recalled when breakfast was a "functional" meal.
"Our parents drummed into us the need to have a hearty breakfast and it was Weet-Bix."
Now, it's restaurant-quality dining without the price tag and discerning cafe dwellers have a checklist about the food's providence and seasonality, and they share dishes as they would for lunch and dinner.
"People are getting amazing value, high level of chef input and quality of produce."
The Duchess of Spotswood gave the western suburbs a caffeine-fuelled injection of groovy five years ago and became the equivalent of New York's Brooklyn after people "crossed the bridge" that is the West Gate.
Husband and wife owners Andrew Gale and Bobby Green are enticing Melburnians with their "Three little pigs" special and in nursery rhyme style, little piggies went to Spotswood and are still going for crisp pork belly, black pudding and fried pig's ears.
Another allure of the breakfast scene is ordering sweet or savoury dishes that you can't make at home.
Everyone can use a toaster but Ms Green said: "Nobody is going to braise their own pig's head for 24 hours."
While it's vital to know whether your coffee is single origin and the bread is baked on the premises, you need to arrive before 10am to avoid queue rage.
From pressed juices to pressing issues: If you didn't Instagram your breakfast, did it really happen?
Suzanne Carbone is a columnist.