The Little Larder

I'm in love with New Farm, its an amazing location for breakfast places and eating in general. Its busy inner city, but not too grossly, dirty, scummy city like its neighbour, Fortitude Valley. Little Larder has been on my go to list for quite a while now, but the clincher was that one of my work friends recommended it to me over another place in New Farm. She's a soft spoken girl who never has a bad thing to say about anyone, so when I heard her describe the other place as, "not great", I knew I had to avoid it.

Yay all day brekkie!

I was meeting up with my Boyfriend and H., for breakfast and since we were going to get there first we had a nice wander up Boundary Street, into Choquette and a few other places looking at menus and things. I spotted Little Larder as soon as I turned around the corner, you know why? This fluffy fellow!

SO FLUFFY!

He is a very good doggy, yes he is. He's huge! He looks like a bearded Old English shepherd. He's much larger than my Siri, probably about 30-35kg. He just sits there, snoozing, very calmly watching everything else around him. Every time I've been here, he has been here. I guess he's a cafe dog?

 Here is their menu by the way. Oh and their specials at the time we went there.

Their board also has drinks on there.

Specials!

Haha, here they are up close!

And the other side!

There is some very interesting stuff around the shop. A food display that was being worked on, lots of posters and some cute lego figures scattered around. This was one that my Boyfriend spotted and took a liking to.

Woah, experimental angles!

The interior, well half of it

What's that?

An arm!? But triceratops are herbivores!?

Its table service so we headed inside out of the morning chill and got some menus.We instantly got some water and I was happy to see that every table had a little milk bottle of purple flowers. We all got drinks as well.

Haha the top flowers are not as pretty

My Boyfriend got an iced coffee, which he says is incredibly bitter and had no sugar added to it. He still drank it all though.

Sunny.

 
H., got some kind of coffee or maybe even a hot chocolate. I don't remember what. 

Di Bella coffee!

I got a watermelon, apple and strawberry drink. I was really hoping that it wouldn't taste too strongly of watermelon, I was completely wrong. It tasted pretty much only of watermelon, I still drank it all.

Frothy and eagerly drunk despite the abundance of watermelon

I got the Larder plate which you can't do alterations to. I chose scrambled eggs, and got also bacon, pork sausages, mushrooms, potato rosti, onion, roasted tomato and sourdough. I had really mixed feelings about this plate, the scrambled eggs were gooey soft and well seasoned. The bacon was crunchy and pan fried, and not evenly pan fried either. There was a rasher that was crunchy on either end but was much, much paler in the centre, like when the rasher bunches up due to heat. The spinach was fresh and nothing else remarkable. The mushrooms were good but the onions that came with it, were odd, they were very sweet as if they had had sugar added to them. The onions were well caramelised but so oddly sweet as if they were candied, H., agreed that they tasted super sweet as did my Boyfriend. The deep fried potato "rosti" wasn't so much a grated rosti as a potato cake, it was delicious though as was the sourdough, there were two pieces and I only ate one. I gave the roasted tomato to my Boyfriend who said it was the best one he had ever eaten.  
 

The bacon is shyly hiding with the spinach at the back

My Boyfriend got the pesto scrambled eggs with spinach and smoked salmon on sourdough. This was amazing, I kept eating off his plate. The pesto scrambled were very restrained, a lot of places make their pesto scrambled eggs fluro green by mixing up the pesto INTO the eggs themselves. This had pale green ribbons of pesto throughout it. The salmon was delicious too. I didn't eat the tomato sauce/relish and neither did my Boyfriend. He did note that he got really badly sick after eating this, but he had just gotten over a bout of illness and had had that effect with quite a few different foods.

Freaking delicious

H., once again, chose the worst dish of the lot. Every time she goes out, she picks the worst thing and wants everyone else's food. This time, despite not liking sweet breakfasts she picked the sweetest thing on the breakfast menu. She got the French toasted brioche with caramel, banana and macademia nuts. It was super sweet, the brioche made the whole thing a lot richer than needed especially by mine and H.,'s standards. The macademia nuts were delicious and crunchy. The caramel was odd, I thought it was maple syrup not a caramel, it wasn't as sticky as caramels tend to be, very thin and fluid but it didn't have the same golden colour, thickness or gloss as a caramel sauce does.  

So much cinnamon

H., was eating my food and hers, I was eating mine and my Boyfriends and he was eating his own food. We didn't finish out meals, my Boyfriend did though.

Failures.

I made a second trip here almost a week later with my friend Jubi. We went just as lunch service started. She got an English Breakfast tea with a side of honey and milk. She was a little surprised when they just brought out a large mug of tea and not a teapot.

Cute little pitchers

I got wheedled into getting a drink too, I picked a chocolate milkshake. It was good but not great with a thick foamy top and constantly bubbles throughout the mixture. 

Solid.

 I got buffalo wings, chilli cheese fries, coleslaw and a bacon and blue cheese dipping sauce. It was a bad choice, I didn't realise how big it would be. They gave me four drumsticks and four wing pieces. That coleslaw could be a side dish by itself and the same thing could be said of the chilli cheese fries. 

Huge!

The chicken was great, moist and tender, coated in a smoky, sweet and spicy sauce that got absolutely everywhere. When I got home, I found a blob of sauce on cheekbone, I had no idea how it got up there.The blue cheese and bacon dipping sauce was way too much, I felt like having a heart attack when I tried combining the two, the blue cheese was very strong in it. The coleslaw was just a simple one tossed in mayonnaise and some black pepper but it really reduced the heat from the chicken and the chilli. The chilli cheese fries were wrong, their were soft and cold, but you could taste that they had once been very crunchy and delicious. The chilli was amazing, it had that subtle spiciness where you tell can its spicy, but you don't think its too bad and by the time you hit your third bite, you're panting and reaching for a drink. It had very good beef mince, tomato and carrot chunks and I could've eaten that as a meal by itself. 

I only managed to eat, four pieces of chicken, three drumsticks and one wing pieces, half the coleslaw and about a third of the chilli cheese fries. I failed so badly I am ashamed to admit it in this blog. Losing weight has a lot to account for this failure, before I lost all this weight, I could do much better in eating until I was uncomfortably full. 

Failure.

Jubi got the poached chai pear with porridge and golden syrup. It wasn't what we were expecting at all, because the porridge didn't come in a bowl at all. It was a very thick, chewy concoction that was upended with the pear sliced on top. It actually reminds of a thick oatmeal or something, like steel cut oats. I think of porridge as a thick, soup thing, something that goes gloop when you hold it upside down. This thing was lacking that gloop factor, it held its shape remarkably well. 

Squiggly golden syrup

 She said it was what some people would describe as bland but she enjoyed the porridge with the subtle sweetness of the pear. She said she had always wanted to try a poached pear and enjoyed this one. It was soft enough to eat with a spoon, although not meltingly soft like some other ones are. She said there was only a hint of chai to the pear but the scent was there. Unlike me, she finished all her meal but spent the entire car ride home saying how she full she felt and how she almost regretted it.

The Little Larder
Atmosphere: 7, nice relaxed little cafe where you can catch up with some friends, I wouldn't make it my local though and I don't think I'd go there every morning. A casual occasion perhaps?
Service: 9, they were really friendly attentive waiting staff. Probably almost alarmingly friendly though, the first time our waitress sat down beside us while we were ordering. The second time our waiter asked really in depth how our day was and asked us further questions when we mentioned going to IKEA.
Food: 9, solid and the price is very reasonable. I've been twice in a week, what does that say?