An impromptu breakfast out this morning with the usual suspects took us to El Mirage, one of numerous small places to under-eat and overspend along Lygon Street with decorating schemes that strike a precarious balance between precision and dishevelment. Inside and out, the place hovers somewhere between a Los Angeles barrio garage and an architect's studio.
Harsh sun floods the plinth deck out front, populated with young-to-middle-aged bed-headed folks wearing aggressively cheap sunglasses and tattoos. Inside, a high arc ceiling of faux brown maple curls over the tables, in high contrast to retro celadon wallpaper and butterceam-painted brick. Tables are routinely wiped clean and there's no crusty build-up on the Tabasco bottle, but dust bunnies congregate in corners, quietly multiplying. Specimens of gluten-free muffins are held in stasis nearby within a gleaming glass display case, not a crumb in sight.
After half of a good latte, I decided I'd steer clear of the ever-popular but seldom-satisfying eggs benedict, and chose the potato rosti, which promised a poached egg alongside a combination of roasted spuds and feta. What arrived gave the impression of a plateful of condiments arranged in a circle, staring at the empty centre of the plate, each waiting for the other to take the lead. None did. Ringing the plate's perimeter: rosti-- tiny, thatched balls of pan-fried potato strings, good on texture but light on flavour, and with no detectable feta; the promised poached egg, sitting blankly; a haystack of peppery but undressed rocket, from which I plucked a few rubbery, wilted leaves; and a small ramekin of brilliant red sauce (the only true condiment, but a little flat) made of tomato and red capsicum. With no obvious starting point, there was little choice but to mix one with the other and hope something interesting happened. It didn't.
The ingredients were small and tame enough to make a fork feel too large and clumsy a tool for the job. Chopsticks might have helped, but would have left too much of what was in low supply to begin with on the plate. It made for quick but unsatisfying work, the fleeting image of breakfast vanishing from my plate in a few swipes.
