Café Melbourne

Flat Whites on the Main

3.5 of 5

Australians take coffee more seriously than most nations take defense policy. So when two of them, Angus Castran and Xavier Martinelli, opened a café on Saint-Laurent Boulevard and named it after their coffee capital, the bar was set high. Café Melbourne clears it by getting the basics right: a proper flat white, beans from Montreal roasters like Traffic and Binocle, and a counter crew that seems to like the job.

Order the avocado toast. It is good avocado on good sourdough, which is not news, but the tomato chutney on the side stopped me mid-bite. Sweet, sharp, a little slow-cooked heat: it tastes like the jar my grandmother kept at the back of the fridge, the one we were not allowed to finish. I did not expect to find her on Saint-Laurent. The rest of the weekend brunch rotates, with dishes named after Australian celebrities, and it runs until the food runs out. When it is gone, it is gone, a policy I respect.

The room is small, with a terrace in good weather, on the Main just below Mile End. Go on a weekday for a quiet coffee, or early on a weekend to beat the brunch line.

Order this: Flat white, Avocado toast with the tomato chutney, Smoked salmon bagel with gochujang cream cheese, if it is on, Whatever brunch special is running that week
The damage: $$
Go: A weekday for coffee, or a weekend morning ahead of the brunch crowd
Find it: 4615 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, QC H2T 1R2