The Pickle Barrel

60 Ferguson Street, Williamstown

A trip across the Westgate Bridge, led us to a little place I'd heard good things about recently, in the way of breakfasts. The place is called The Pickle Barrel- a kind of little cafe / deli type place in Williamstown's main shopping strip, Ferguson St.
We grabbed a seat on the street, which was protected from the chilly wind coming from Hobson's Bay by those big plastic blinds that most cafes have these days. The tables are small, barely enough room to fit your tea making 'equipment' on, let alone a plate as well.
The service here unfortunately doesn't come with a smile, but then again, I'm not sure if I'd be smiling if I had to work on a Saturday morning!
Once we had ordered our breakfasts, we had to wait a considerably long period of time to actually get our meals brought out to us. The place wasn't that big and they didn't seem overly busy, especially for a Saturday morning.
Rach and I both ordered the Poached Eggs, with Goats Cheese, Red Peppers and Prosciutto.
Let me start of by saying that the Eggs were perfectly poached. I don't think they could have been done any better. What let the whole thing down though was the fact that the Roasted Red Peppers had been kept in the fridge and were still really cold, so was the Goats cheese 'spread' that was smeared on the toast under the eggs. This brought the temperature of the eggs down as quick as soaking them in an ice bath. So, from perfectly poached eggs, we went to a totally cold meal. I'm not sure why the chef chose Prosciutto either for a breakfast plate. It was raw, chewy and just plonked on the plate. He/she probably thought it would be cool.
So, overall, kind of disappointing really, it could have been good, but a couple of minor adjustments like keeping the peppers and cheese at room temp and my breakky would have been great!

6/10

Perfect eggs gone wrong...