Mela, Perth

This weekend we joined the magnet hunt on William Street in Northbridge and Perth, where you can collect magnets from 24 boutique stores, galleries and bars in the area in honour of the 2011 WAMI Festival. The hunt started yesterday (21 May 2011) and is continuing all week. We headed down early to grab our magnets, but pretty soon started to get grumpy-hungry, and knew that we needed some brunch food soon! Luckily our favourite Indian restaurant was located in the heart of the magnet-hunting area!

What's that you say? Indian for breakfast? Well actually, yes! Mela offers breakfast and chaat (Indian stall food) on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays between 11:30am - 4:30pm. I've included a picture of the menu here so that you can all get your Google on because if you are anything like us, you have no idea what any of these dishes are!

After having the entire menu explained to us, we picked a number of dishes at random. We chose the mixed chaat (little dough parcels covered in tonnes of delicious sauces), dhai puri (egg-shaped shells filled with chickpea, chutney & yoghurt), channa bathura (light fried bread with chickpea curry) and aloo paratha (bread stuffed with potato curry).

channa bathura 

dhai puri at the front, and mixed chaat at the back

aloo paratha

It was all delicious! Think fresh, light and flavoursome vegetarian curries combined with coriander and yoghurt, soft and fluffy pastry - yum! And the best thing is that you can try several dishes at once and share them round. We spied several dishes which we didn't order today but would come back for!

mango lassi

And of course what is a good Indian meal without a mango lassi? We both had one and can report that they are very very good! Since chaat can be messy, we put Tallulah in a high chair so that she could continuously throw her toys to the ground, but it meant that we could both eat at the same time. Neither of us were willing to let the food sit there uneaten! We left with a couple of chocolate barfi sweets to eat on the rest of our magnet hunt!

The Verdict:
Lassi  4/5
Chaat (the meal!)  4/5
Service  3.5/5
Atmosphere  4/5
Total  15.5/20

Baby T's score: 3.5/5 (With it being easy to get in and out, Tallulah was quite happy with the experience)

Would we go again: Yes, there are plenty more chaat delights we would come back for!

Tiger, Tiger Coffee Bar, Perth

This is Tiger, tiger's courtyard, which passersby might catch a glimpse of if they look into a passageway whilst walking down Murray Street in the west end of the city. It has long been one of our favourites, and I know that Renee was almost a permanent fixture here when she was working in the city PT (pre-Tallulah), so it has been a long time coming for us to review it. We had the chance to do just that when we ventured in to the city last weekend to do some shopping.

Tiger, tiger has great coffee. We both ordered flat whites, and as expected they came out looking like they would taste rich, bold and delicious (they did). Sugar was served in lumps, but, unlike other lump cafés that one might find in Vic Park, Tiger, tiger's lumps were all different sizes. Which was good, as the coffee was great enough that very little, if any, sugar was needed!

By the way, don't you love their blue tables? With the inside/outside theme and random tigers found around the place, the vibe is relaxed and welcoming. In fact the owner came over and chatted with us for a while. Tallulah, who came with us today, was not the only baby joining their parents for breakfast that morning. I was about to take a photo of her before we left, but just then she started crying. So no photo today (there will be pics next time)!

Anyway the food! Avocado, herbs and feta on sourdough will set you back $14; Dr Seuss' ham, poached eggs, oven roasted tomato on olive ciabatta is $18. Renee grabbed 'The Tiger' which is 2 poached eggs with avocado & TT rosamond sauce on sourdough ($15); I had eggs benedict ($15). The food is amazing, but Tigertiger's problem is one of proportion. Renee's breakfast had too little of their chutney-like sauce to go with the eggs and avocado, particularly with the massive amount of toast. I thought the same - if you are going to serve three massive slices of toast, there should be enough of the good stuff to put on it. To be fair, my order got mixed up and so they put my eggs benedict on toast rather than rye bagel. Also, did I mention that the hollandaise sauce was amazing?

 'The Tiger'

eggs benedict

The Verdict

Coffee  4/5

Eggs (the meal!)  3.5/5

Service  3.5/5

Atmosphere  4.5/5

Total = 15.5/20

Baby T's score = 3/5 (Bring on kid dates at Tiger, tiger!)

Would we go again? Yes, it's great to find somewhere good to go in the City that's not located in a food court!

Website: http://tigertigercoffeebar.com/o/