Dining review: Wholefoods cafe, Rough & Bare opens in Mona Vale

Refined sugar, soy, preservatives and gluten are no-nos here. Rough & Bare’s food philosophy is super-healthy.

Breakfast salad is on the menu.

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Rough & Bare is the perfect place to put all those New Year resolutions into practice.

The mantra is super-healthy. Refined sugar, soy, preservatives and gluten are all no-nos in this Scandi meets industrial laneway cafe.

Cafe owner and chef Anthony Milotic.

Rough & Bare prides itself on bio-individuality — whatever that means. Easier to understand is how the name fits the wholefood cafe ethos. In a nutshell (and there’s plenty of those) it’s quality ingredients striped right back to their most natural state, cafe owner and chef Anthony Milotic says. So expect organic this, fermented that and a sprinkling of A-list superfoods like medicinal mushrooms, bee pollen and maca.

Milotic became a health food warrior after a bout of illness three or so years ago.

Inducted into the hall of healthy eating, he decided to take the message to the next level without jamming it down people’s throats. Get him on the coffee bandwagon and that’s a different matter.

Milotic would like his customers to swap their caffeine fix for his signature broth flavoured with bones from Shiralee Meats, turmeric, spices and lemon. Hmmm, now that’s going too far. As a non-coffee drinker, I can’t see many taking up his `brothee’ challenge, even for the sake of a healthy gut.

Breakfast salad is on the menu.

But it’s not just for health nuts and inner temple worshippers, there’s enough on the breakfast and lunch menu to appeal to mainstream tastebuds even for lardy carbie-eating individuals like us.

Of course, that leafy darling kale still holds sway, but Milotic prefers to serve it as teeny-tiny baby leaves dressed in a homemade kombucha vinegrette on one of his signature breakfast dishes — porchetta and eggs.

This reworking of bacon and eggs comes with slow cooked rolled pork, two soft-poached eggs, baby kale, spicy kimchi, crackle crumb and sweet potato puree. Get your head around it and it’s an innovative and tasty brunch choice, but maybe not at eight in the morning.

Porchetta and eggs is a twist on bacon and eggs.

Caffeine is on the drinks list. A Pablo & Rusty organic flat white is one of a trio of drinks to make its way to our corner table. Keen to embrace the concept, we’ve chosen the cinnamon-heavy Mochlicious smoothie made with espresso, cacao nibs and dates and another of the off-kilter signature drinks, the lemon and raspberry kombucha.

It’s a strange assortment of refreshments — the kombucha is sweet, slightly acidic and fizzy with a metallic aftertaste ... Definitely not a drink to have with rolled pork belly, kimchi and sweet potato puree. But coffee and nut granola with its selection of toasted seeds and nuts, dried raspberries, fresh berries and coconut yoghurt pulls breakfast back into the `normal’ zone.

Rough & Bare has an innovative healthy food philosophy.

Rough & Bare definitely has an interesting food philosophy. It’s nice to have a wholefood cafe that’s not too over the top preachy.

Twitter: @beverley_hudec

ESSENTIALS

Rough & Bare

1/1 Bungan Lane, Mona Vale,

9999 1950

Open: Daily, 7am-4pm

Go for: Breakfast panna cotta, $14.90; porchetta and eggs, $22.90

Coffee: Pablo & Rusty

Vibe: Nicely natural