Review: Owl & the Baker Bentleigh cafe a Middle East delight
REVIEW: Almost everything is made in-house at Bentleigh’s Owl & the Baker and the space is like a mullet haircut: business in the front, party at the back.
THE Owl & the Baker is the name and Middle Eastern fare’s the game for breakfast, lunch, take-home meals, produce and bakery goods.
Almost everything is made in-house at this unassuming Bentleigh newcomer. The space — a former bakery — is like a mullet haircut: business in the front, party at the back.
With 20 seats for patrons and several footpath tables out front, it’s the back area where the action happens; an expansive area, home to dough mixers, pastry stretchers and big-batch ovens that fire up about 6am daily to turn out a good line in Turkish bread, sweet and savoury pastries, cakes and slices.
Owner Andrea Brook brings a wealth of experience to the venture, named after Shakespeare’s reference in Hamlet to the myth of the owl and the baker.
Brook’s been behind a string of successful cafes and food businesses over the past 20 years, including Elwood’s Wild Organic Cafe, Hot Honey in Middle Park and, most recently, GB Espresso in St Kilda.
She’s also had her own catering company, and worked alongside Guy Grossi in the ’90s and at a one-Michelin star restaurant (now defunct) in Reading in the UK.
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Middle Eastern cuisine is the bent here, a style of cooking Brook says she’s always been interested in and which gives her a point of difference to the other cool cafes slowly populating Bentleigh.
She’ll tap into the suburb’s booming apartment population as well as time-poor families and professionals with hearty takeaway meals.
The cafe’s proximity to the Bentleigh train station is another boon.
FOOD
Good luck deciding what to have — the menu is full of tempting choices.
Decisions are made and two poached eggs and roasted cherry tomatoes ($15.50) soon arrive on sourdough, with a liberal lash of a lush and smoky eggplant and yoghurt blend. They say salsa, I’ll say a baba ghanoush-like dip, but whatever, it’s excellent. Add snow-pea tendrils and half an avocado for good measure and I reckon you’ll already be plotting your return visit for more.
Equally top notch is the house-made Turkish bread ($16) with its cargo of chorizo slices, poached eggs, fetta and roast tomatoes, topped with a rubble of pistachio pieces. The flavours are earthy and fresh and the Turkish bread is as it should be — crispy shelled and lightly oiled with fluffy innards.
It pops up again on another breakfast full of citrus oomph from a lemon labne and a lifting preserved lemon and avocado salsa. It’s accompanied by hand-cut leg ham from Andrew’s Choice and the most flavoursome mushrooms I’ve had in a cafe in ages.
Best-looking dish goes to the chia seeds set with almond and coconut milk ($13). It’s superfood super pretty, decorated with banana slices, strawberries, dried barberries, a cut-through turmeric syrup and mint leaves.
Sides include bacon roasted with orange, honey and cardamom ($4) and avgolemono ($3), an eggy lemon sauce standing in for your usual hollandaise.
Cafe classics — bircher, eggs on toast — are also punched out, while chicken pilaf pies ($10.50), chicken and spinach gozleme ($6.50) and egg and bacon pides ($6.50) are cheap eats for those on the run.
With at least half a dozen apartment blocks under construction in the area and busy professionals disembarking from the nearby train station, Brook is cleverly catering to them with take-home, ready-made meals.
Options will vary daily — perhaps a Syrian chicken casserole or moussaka today, chicken and yoghurt soup or a lamb tagine tomorrow.
Sweet treats are no afterthought. A cakes cabinet is chock full of delights, with a strawberry and boysenberry crumble, plum tarts and a tangy apricot cake to mention but a few.
Catering is also available.
DRINKS
A shiny Synesso pumps out reliably good Five Senses coffee ($3.80). Organic tea is from Chamellia and there’s a range of fresh juices ($6) and smoothies ($7), plus blends in a bottle from Greene Street Juice Co.
A liquor license has just been granted. Enjoy a glass of Spanish tempranillo with your lunch or take a bottle away. There’s also Italian rose and a host of Victorian drops, plus local and imported beers.
SERVICE
Service is affable and courteous, but really the menu and display cabinet sells this place.
X-FACTOR
Gorgeous blue tiles handmade in India are a decorator feature of the front bar, but otherwise everything is pretty functional. Don’t let the lack of trendy blond timber, polished concrete and designer exposed light bulbs deter you.
BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
Very reasonable pricing given the quality of ingredients. You’ll be well fed and caffeinated
for under $20.
VERDICT
An instantly good, solid local that deserves a loyal following. It’s the type of place you wish would open in your neck of the woods. Get on board before the secret spreads too far
and wide.
Originally published as Review: Owl & the Baker Bentleigh cafe a Middle East delight
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