Long Story Short, Port Melbourne by Rockstar

My gorgeous niece O was very sure she wanted something sweet to eat for our combined belated Christmas celebration and the day-before-her-15th-birthday lunch. I was sure we’d seen good options on Instagram but neither of us could recall any of them. A quick Google of 'Melbourne pancakes' showed up Long Story Short's Tim Tam pancakes... and we were off!

Long Story Short is a bright light open cafe, with lots of Instagrammable dishes - so it was perfect for O. She couldn’t decide between the three sweet options - the fairy floss dessert burger was calling her name but she wasn’t sure she’d like it, or how she’d eat that blue fairy floss. I was slightly disappointed not to see that in real life though I did spy on a couple next to us sharing one! O’s final choice was the red velvet doughnut bun. It sounded over the top and when it arrived it was! It was also one of the prettiest dishes I’ve seen.

The delicate colourful flowers and multicoloured meringues, the frosty red split doughnut bun, the pineapple magic syrup slowly dripping over the edges, the vibrant rich red smear contrasting the white plate with a soft peach semifreddo inside with peach jelly orbs and pineapples and raspberries.

She loved the doughnut, though it took quite a bit of effort to cut through, but she wasn’t enamoured with the semifreddo. I had a tiny taste and didn’t enjoy the thick custard-like texture and intense almost artificial peach flavour. Her final pronouncement was that replacing the semifreddo with vanilla ice cream and adding raspberry sauce would have been better. She also wasn’t keen on the pineapple magic syrup as she doesn’t really like pineapple!

I’m sticking to a low carb diet at the moment which limits some of the choices I’d normally make. The warm yuzu Brussels sprouts salad sounded delicious, the fish tacos also caught my eye, but if I weren’t low carbing it I’d definitely have chosen the crispy soft shell crab burger. But sadly, low carb it is so...


My lunch was therefore far plainer and far less pretty than O’s but nicely executed. Good ingredients that were well cooked. The poached eggs had the delicious runny yolk, the bacon was the perfect combination of crispy rendered fatty bits with tasty meaty bacon and the mushrooms were a lovely combination of varieties to give some textural interest. Sounds boring but it was filling and plain and tasty. Getting the simple things right - that’s a good sign!

The cafe was a tad noisy when the open bar area was whizzing up juices - it was enough that we had to wait to keep chatting. I think coffee drinkers would be very well catered for with the impressive looking, fancy drip coffee paraphernalia! The display of sweets included the always popular Butter Mafia Henchmen cookies and brownies and some other flavoured doughnuts that hadn’t been turned into a bun!

Verdict

We liked it.

Mid value.

Overall

It was the perfect choice to cater for a variety of tastes - the sweet-toothed teen and the low-carber oldie! The pretty sweets are great value and could (and probably should) be shared. There are lots of delicious savoury options. The food is beautifully presented - and the ingredients were good quality and well cooked. Worth a try especially for those Instagrammable dishes!

Find it at

Long Story Short
40 Crockford Street
Port Melbourne VIC 3207
Phone: (03) 9646 5697