05 Aug The Hardware Société, Melbourne CBD Take 2

This time I arrived at around 10:20am and there was a bit of a queue. Fortunately, because I was brunching solo I only had to wait about 10 minutes for a seat at a round communal table. While waiting I discovered that Silo was directly opposite Hardware Societe, and there was no queue.

Baked Eggs w. Chorizo, Almonds, Piquillo Pimientos Sauce And Queso De Cabra Goats Milk Cheese ($17)

Today I ordered baked eggs with chorizo, almonds, piquillo pimientos sauce and queso de cabra goats milk cheese ($17), which arrived quite quickly. The waitress told me to give it a bit of a stir, but I didn’t want to destroy the integrity of eggs so I waited a little while. Now when I think about it I could have separated the eggs from the sides of the dish and maybe turned them upside down. Because of the heat of the mini casserole dish, the parts of the eggs touching it were more cooked than the rest so I got a mix of well-cooked, half-cooked and runny. There was plenty of moisture from the sauce so the more cooked parts were still delicious. One person on the communal table received his baked eggs 5 minutes before me but had barely eaten his eggs when I’d finished; the eggs would have been well and truly cooked through. I was somewhat relieved there wasn’t too much cheese (though being goats cheese it probably wouldn’t have had a very strong cheesy taste anyway) and was pleased to see there was a generous serving of about 7-8 pieces of chorizo. I’m not sure if there were two or three eggs. I could see two distinct ones and a stirred and cooked egg yolk elsewhere but didn’t know if it was a completely different egg or just escaped yolk from one of the others. The parsley and almonds provided some extra texture and sweetness to the dish and overall the dish was very enjoyable.

By the time I left at just past 11am there was no longer a queue and actually a number of empty seats. I asked about the croque madame, which is now only on weekends (or maybe it was like that before but people put their blog posts and photos up later in the week). Hopefully when I come to visit again on a weekend they’ll still have the duck egg version.

On the way back to Swanston St I noticed a Seoul Metro signboard on the kerb and realised (somewhat belatedly) that the carpark must have an entrance on both Lt Lonsdale and Lonsdale St. It could be a handy shortcut sometime in the future.

The Hardware Societe
118-120 Hardware St
Melbourne, VIC, 3000
(03) 9078 5992