The Hardware Société - #MELB2014

Day 1 - Brunch/Lunch

To celebrate successfully finishing our first year of optometry, 3 of my absolute closest optom friends and I decided to treat ourselves with a short trip to Melbourne! As soon as we checked into our apartment in the morning, we rushed to the first of the places on my list of food places to visit - The Hardware Société - to have brunch with 2 of my friends from high school. 

This was actually the line up when we had finished eating. Crazy! Thank goodness my friends had arrived early and were seated at a table for all of 6 us.

Cappucino

 Homemade lemon & mint iced tea

 Omelette $20

Pea, asparagus, crab & lemon salad

I was pretty excited seeing this on the menu because it was different to something I would usually see on menus at similar places in Adelaide. Unfortunately the omelette was unevenly salted, with portions tasting very bland in contrast to others which tasted like a teaspoon of salt had been dropped in that particular area. The crab meat was dry and could have used a little bit more lemon, or even a wedge of fresh lemon to squeeze over the entire dish. I really regret not ordering baked eggs which I think are their most popular dish!

 Pork belly & fried eggs $21

Buttered crushed potatoes & leek, apple aioli

According to Michelle, the pork was very tender but the skin was not even close to being crunchy as you'd expect it to be. I'm all for a runny egg yolk but even I could agree that the egg was raw. The whites were basically uncooked.

Chicken Cordon Bleu $22

Camella: "Good but nothing special".

 Scrambled eggs $20

Un: chorizo, onion & capsicum sofrito, crispy jamon, olive bread

Kym also found her dish difficult to eat was also unevenly salted and contained a lot of chorizo. I didn't try any of it, but I think maybe more salad would be required to 'lift' the flavours of the dish and contrast the salty chorizo.

BLT  $15

Pork rilette, confit baby tomatoes, herb aioli, beetroot caponata, brioche bun, celeriac coleslaw

Rina's dish looked delicious! No complaints here, except that the board it was presented on was a little thin and made eating the burger neatly sans-crumbs quite difficult. 

The Continental $16

House made granola, five:am organic vanilla yoghurt, caramelised pineapple & blood orange, warm croissant

Eileen enjoyed this dish but thinks the serving size was rather small for the price. I agree!

For all the hype surrounding this place, I was actually quite disappointed. I'm not too sure exactly what I was expecting, but most of the dishes we ordered were nothing special. I probably should've ordered the baked eggs! Also, for the prices of some of these dishes ($20 for an omelette or scrambed eggs?!), I don't think it's worth it. The presentation was great though, with all the dishes looking fresh, vibrant and delicious!
Understandably, it was super busy on this particular day we were there and service wasn't the best, however the food didn't take too long to come out. I will probably pay them a visit the next time I'm back in Melbourne only if I've run out of brreakfast/brunch/lunch spots to visit!