You would expect that a cafe called Le Petit Bourke would be so very French.
Initial impressions when you enter reinforce the view of a provincial French cafe, both in terms of the baguettes and croissants on offer and the simple country style feel. What you start to notice after a few minutes though are the Turkish touches, from the guy behind the counter (Manager?), to the cheese and spinach filo pastry (a gozeleme by a different name) and the lamb dumplings.
While the menu is a little limited fortunately both the French and Turkish sides of the menu are well worth trying.
Both Ruby Grapefruit and myself tried the salmon baguette, a little pricey at around $12 and while the bread itself was pretty typical the salmon was of much better quality than you’d expect in a baguette, capable of holding its own as part of a main meal.
Snooze and Bureaucrat both opted for the lamb dumplings. These are tiny, much smaller but more numerous than your typical dumpling house serve, and served with sour cream. Filling and delicious, in some ways I wished I’d ordered these too.
Third main was Ms No Meats Cheese and Spinach pastry. I am quite a fan of gozleme and liked the slight crispiness to the casing, and the excellent balance between pastry, spinach and cheese.
While the selection of luncheon desserts were limited, we opted to try the raspberry muffin and a rhubarb and fig frangipane tart. While I liked both the general consensus was that the muffin was just slightly dry, but the tart absolutely delicious.
Overall
Very friendly service, good food and as an added bonus you can sneak a peak at the very interesting Victorian Boarding House now hotel of which it is a part. A bit of an oasis in a part of Melbourne you just wouldn’t expect.
Verdict
Food – 8
Service – 7.5
Ambience – 8
Price – 7
Address
24 Little Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel (08) 9663 4484
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