Dining review: Three Doors Down in Mona Vale

Mona Vale laneway cafe Three Doors Down has great mix of contemporary food and great coffee.

Three Doors Down is an industrial hole in the wall cafe with surprisingly great food

Laneways throw up all sorts of interesting eateries. Take the alley running between Akuna Lane and Bungan St in Mona Vale.

Asian salad bar Banana Blossom is down at one end; at the other is one of those great finds. Three Doors Down is little gem. Bare-bricked and industrial, it’s not going win plaudits for its location — it’s opposite a podiatrist — but that’s what makes it such surprising standout.

Light fantastic: The Ocean trout salad

Coffee is a must. The custom house blend is Pablo & Rusty and serious drinkers can take enjoy single origins as black and espresso coffees.

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Come here for the food too, it is quite a revelation. It sings and dances with imagination. It’s cafe food with flair. Run of the mill chips, burgers and steak sandwiches ... have no place on this evolving and tiny blackboard menu.

Eighteen months on, Israeli Tomer Elnekave is the man with the chalk and the culinary creativity. His food is trendy mix of east meets west — a sort of home from home, he says.

One Israeli favourite and a current darling of the Sydney breakfast circuit is shakshuka baked eggs. It right up there on the breakfast menu; as are sweet potato rosti, spinach, poached eggs and creamy pea puree and an organic fruit loaf with ricotta and honey.

Tomer Elnekave in his Mona Vale cafe, Three Doors Down.

Elnekave is in his element at lunch. Smoky pulled pork and cabbage slaw rolls compete with cinnamon roast pumpkin and chick pea salad. Then there’s Three Doors Down’s pretty pink smoked ocean trout salad. It comes with avocado daintily piled on roast potato hash drizzled with lime and black pepper aoili is zingy, light and lovely. It has crunch from the red cabbage and tucked inside the creamy mash patty is parmesan, shallots softened in butter, garlic, salt and pepper.

But it’s the lamb salad that’s the star of the show. It’s been such a hit with customers that it has been moved from the specials’ board to the main menu.

Big flavours: lamb salad with cauliflower flatbread.

And rightly so. A trio of ingredients — lamb, cauliflower and coriander paste — work in harmony.

The backstory is the lamb. Elnekave uses leg because it’s not as fatty as other cuts and cooks it over night in a cinnamon and star anise-infused master stock to bolster the flavour.

The result is fall-apart meat that’s shredded and piled warm on top of flatbread. But it’s not ordinary flatbread. This inspired take on traditional bread comes from making cauliflower-based pizzas.

Trendy: Pulled pork roll with cabbage slaw.

Why not press all the moisture out, add almond meal and plate them up with lamb, alfalfa sprouts, watercress and cherry tomatoes?

Elnekave did and his finishing touch is a punchy coriander paste sourced from none other than Israeli chef du jour Yotam Ottolenghi. Elkenave is a fan of the British-based cookbook writer, chef and restaurant owner.

Three Doors Down has contemporary food and great coffee, what more is there to want?

Tomer Elnekave on coffee-making duties.

THREE DOORS DOWN

WHERE: 12/ 24 Waratah St, Mona Vale, 0404 562 337

OPEN: Monday to Saturday, 6.30am-3pm

GO FOR: Slow-cooked lamb salad with cauliflower flatbread, $18

COFFEE: Pablo & Rusty custom house blend

VIBE: Counter productive

BOTTOM LINE: $50 for two

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