Auction Rooms Cafe

Auction Rooms has been on my list for a while now, but since I rarely venture outside the CBD, it's taken me quite some time to get there. 

And I wish I'd been sooner!

Breakfast board: grilled chorizo, ocean trout croquette, feta, avocado puree,
soft-boiled egg with rye soldiers and white iced coffee

The breakfast board has a little bit of everything you'd want for breakfast. Or brunch. Or given the time we got there, afternoon tea. 

The slices of grilled chorizo were crispy on the outside, and made up of fatty porky goodness with a little kick of spice. The soft-boiled egg was gooey and perfect for dipping the soldiers in. (If anyone ever told you not to play with your food, leave that rule at home.) The croquette was perfectly fried, crunchy outside, creamy inside. Little quinelles and dollops of avocado puree and feta were perfect condiments for not just the soldiers, but the croquette and the chorizo as well. The board was finished off with a light salad of green leaves, carrot slices and picked onion. 

The white iced chocolate came in a classic old milk bottle and was sweet and fragrant.

A perfect balance of flavours, textures and colours.

Seared ocean trout

Soda pops: apple & cinnamon, Old Auctioneer's lemonade

To finish off, we ordered two of the homemade soda pops. The classic lemonade was bubbly, lemony and refreshing, while the apple & cinnamon was a little more subtle, tasting very much like someone had taken a perfect apple pie and captured it's essence in a bottle. 

Our waitress was attentive and accommodating, and service was reasonably quick.

Definitely worth the trek outside the free tram zone!

Boombap

Tucked away on the ground floor inside the Exchange Tower on Little Collins Street, Boombap is a hole-in-the-wall kind of place. But its size is very much disproportionate to the flavours they pack into the food they serve.

Top: Boombap storefront
Bottom: buttermilk fried chicken & coleslaw bap, iced mocha

The storefront is welcoming and has a definite street-food feel about it. Menu items are handwritten on chalkboards above the counter and along the top of one of the back walls (which is also lined with cassette tapes).

While there isn't a fixed menu, I'm told there are three regular items - the buttermilk fried chicken & coleslaw bap, the gumbo, and the Texas BBQ beef roll (previously, the philly cheesesteak). Today's menu features crispy fish po'boy, sauteed mushroom baguette, corn & chilli chowder and hot & spicy chicken wings amongst other soul food classics.

I order a buttermilk fried chicken bap and an iced mocha and seat myself on one of the four seats available to dine-in customers (limited seating doesn't seem to be a problem as most people order to go).

The bap arrives in a brown paper bag, and it's huge! The bap is overflowing with crispy pieces of fried chicken and plenty of coleslaw that makes the whole thing taste healthy! Bonus points to these guys for serving this in a little polystyrene box to catch all the bits that fall out.

The iced mocha is nice and refreshing - not too sweet and without the mounds of whipped cream that usually make an iced mocha sickeningly rich. 

Amazing food and excellent service. A very pleasant start to my day off!