Servery and Spoon, Malvern East by Big Fil

Malvern East has a reputation for being a bit of a black hole for places to eat. While no Brunswick or Footscray, I don't think it's quite that bad. I plan to try a few more places along Waverley Road over the coming months but this week's cab off the rank was Servery and Spoon.

First impressions of Servery and Spoon were very good. The main eating area was well lit and uncluttered and it seemed popular with the well heeled local crowd.

As the front room was getting full both times I visited I headed for the room at the back. Not as cheerful as the front rooms (on an overcast day it was quite dark in places) it was still a fairly comfortable place to sit. One thing I didn't like though was the metal legged tables on a concrete floor. Not only were they heavy when I had to move the table slightly (it was pressing right up against the chair leaving no space to sit), the racket it made when dragged across the floor was loud and annoying. If given a choice the middle of the café looks to be the nicest place to sit.


When ordering the baked eggs with chorizo, chilli, fetta and caramelised onion I was warned that they were 'a bit spicy'. If your tolerance for chilli is low you might want to give these a miss. To me though these were nicely warming on a fairly miserable day (What is with Melbourne weather the last couple of months?). One thing I did particularly like about this dish was the generous amount of good bread served on the side. Often cafes are stingy with the bread, but this came with the perfect amount for firstly eating with the eggs and then scrapping off the bits stuck to the side and bottom.


Unfortunately the other dishes weren't quite up to the same standard. While certainly not terrible, they were just a bit mediocre, consistent with what I'd expect at a randomly selected Melbourne cafe. For example, with the Eggs Benedict for some reason the eggs were lacking in flavour, the ham a bit salty.


The honey and lemon yoghurt cake was dense and moist but sweeter than I'd expected. In particular it was lacking that slight tartness I was hoping for from the lemon. Given that it wasn't particularly cheap this meant the flavour was less complex than I was hoping for.


The chocolate brownie on the other hand does get points for a nice rich chocolate flavour which I enjoyed a lot, and the size was generous. It was however much too crumbly, to the extent that I gave up trying to eat it with the fork (an attempt to keep chocolate fingerprints off the book I was reading). I suspect that it has been prepared a few days earlier and was no longer as moist as it had been.


Overall
I'm in two minds about Servery and Spoon. The staff were friendly, the food came quickly, the hot chocolate wasn't bad and I really enjoyed the baked eggs. On the other hand, the screeches from moving the table set my teeth on edge a bit and the rest of the food was nothing special. It would probably depend on which was the exception, the eggs or the other orders, and it would require several return visits to sample more of the menu to be sure. So somewhere I would recommend as worth trying but not without a hint of nerves.

Verdict
Food - 7
Service - 7.5
Ambience - 6.5
Price - 6

Address
137 Waverley Road
Malvern East VIC 3145
Tel: (03) 9571 7495