Rathdowne Street Food Store

617 Rathdowne St, Carlton North VIC

I've been meaning to check out Rathdowne Street Food Store for years, but it seems that you have to make a booking most weekends and apart from very special occasions, I refuse to make a breakfast booking. However, this weekend, my friends were eager to try RSFS, so they made the booking.

It's a small cafe, which is definately busy - we can see why we need to book. However, you would think if you booked in advance, you wouldn't get the table near the door - especially on a chilly winter Melbourne morning. The room is full of people that look like off duty doctors, lawyers, and business people. This seems to be Yuppy Central. The menu is a massive breakfast menu and I'm suprised there's such a big choice.

I decide to go with the special breakfast, which is Scrambled Eggs, with Basil, fetta, Smoked Salmon and tomato. By reading the menu, I probably stupidly assumed that all the ingredients would be served seperately. However, the scrambled eggs were cooked with all these ingredients mixed in. I am not a fan of this at all. Firstly, i don't believe that you can cook the eggs properly when you have mixed through all these ingredients. Secondly, the ingredients always seem to bleed out their liquid when served like this and you end up with that puddle of juice at the bottom of the plate. You can see this in the photo below.


It was indeed a generous serve for breakfast and none of us that ordered the special, managed to finish the plate of food. The eggs were overcooked and every mouthful had too many flavours and was almost sickly. RSFS could probably do with shortening their menu and living by the mantra of 'do a few things and do them well' rather than cook everything and do a less than average job.

I'd heard rave reviews about this place for years, however maybe I missed my chance at visiting, when they were sending out good food. Or maybe we visited on a bad morning. Or maybe their special breakfast, just wasn't that special.

To top a poor breakfast off, we ordered a second round of coffees, which after 20 minutes we had to chase up. Turned out they'd forgotten about them. We told them not to bother and paid our bill and left.

Rathdowne Street Food Store - not worth making a booking.