The Little Ox, Brighton by Big Fil

The Little Ox is the real deal, offering well thought out and delicious breakfasts to those willing to travel to the backstreets of suburban Elwood.


With white walls, fresh flowers on every table and comfy seats to sit on, it's quite a pretty café given its bovine connections. Despite reading of complaints about the staff even at far too early o'clock on a Sunday morning our waitress was noticeably sleepy but friendly and attentive, the interior a warm contrast to the wet and rainy Melbourne weather.


With a number of interesting options my choice was the corned beef, with potato roesti, sautéed spinach, and poached egg with hollandaise sauce. I was curious as to how well the combination of these flavours would work. Corned beef with potato is straightforward but combined with spinach, a poached egg, hollandaise sauce? Suffice it to say that they worked much better than I'd expected, the beef thinly sliced and not overly salty, the egg perfectly poached and the sauce not overly heavy in a well balanced dish.


And since I always talk so much about the perfectly poached egg, and this one looked so beautiful, I had to get a shot of it.


Snooze went for something I'd also been considering: grilled polenta with pork and pistachio sausage, poached egg and pear relish. Given Snooze prefers a lighter breakfast than me I was concerned that the polenta and sausage could be overly heavy. Not so, with deliciously meaty sausage, fluffy polenta grilled on all sides, and the firm pear relish adding lightness to the dish. And again, a perfectly poached egg to top it off.


The breakfast dessert options are limited but all looked good, with the walnut, chocolate and mascarpone muffin catching my eye. It was a little more crumbly than I prefer, but served straight from the oven hot with warmed butter on the side and delicious.


Overall
Obviously dear to the hearts of locals given how many braved the elements on a particularly bad day, the tables are limited and the queue was hitting the door before 9am. This could have been partly because the outside tables weren't really useable, but I'd definitely suggest getting here early if travelling especially down to Elwood for a visit.

The menu contains a few interesting options, well thought out and very tasty, which are combined with great presentation. Match this up with the type of flavours which particularly appeal to me and the result isn't necessarily the most impressive breakfast I've had recently but certainly the one I've enjoyed the most.

Verdict
Food - 9
Ambience - 7.5
Service - 8
Price - 7

Address
452 New Street
Brighton VIC 3186
Tel: (03) 9596 6577