The Hardware Sociéte

Melbourne, your homey and alternative and artsy cafes/brunch spots will be greatly missed.
I only wish I had the budget and time to discover them all because I'm pretty sure I have the stomach.

Brunch date on one potentially stressful SWOT VAC week day.  But given that I have given up caring, I was especially okay with wasting time eating.

The Hardware Society is tucked right near Thousand Pound Bend.  I found it in passing on my way to Tuesday nights burgers, remembering months ago when I added it to my mental list of places to eat in Melbourne, so naturally, I had to go the next day.

Dragged my eating buddies out with me, and the three of us ordered baked eggs, pictures of which taunted me on Urbanspoon - can't really concentrate on studies after seeing those.

I went with the vegetarian option because... well the brie got me.  And it helped that the waitress in the cute yellow apron and bright red lipstick recommended it, too.

Served in a little dutch oven (love baby serving vessels) alongside three pieces of pesto and bread.  Dipped and soaked and rolled around in the baked egg sauce, just forget about it.  This is one of those times you want to sop up every last bit, including scraping up the cheese off the lid.

Concentrating hard on capturing the chorizo baked eggs.

Less cluttered NYC feel, God I love those place.

Speaking of brie... studying the production of camembert (Geotichium candidum and Penicillin camemerti deacidify the cheese surface and setting up a pH gradient from low in centre to high at the surface due to the production of ammonia on the surface from protein breakdown.  Lactate and ions migrate to the surface where lactate is metabolised and calcium phosphate precipitates, resulting -with the pH gradient and proteolysis- in the characteristic soft centre of camembert.)... definitely should've started rote memorizing this stuff before the night before my exam...

Two more days to New Zealand, bitchesssss.