Frankly, if you order just Vegemite toast at a cafe, you deserve whatever’s coming to you. For the cost of a single serving at a cafe, you can buy enough bread and enough Vegemite to last you one very bread-heavy week. There is nothing that a trained chef can do with your Vegemite toast that you couldn’t possibly do at home with the skillset you currently have for a fraction of the cost, except, it seems, go to ridiculously unnecessary lengths with the presentation.
The Australian people love nothing more than getting pissed off at what ‘hipsters’ are doing to dishes they wouldn’t order in bars and cafes they would never go to, and today we’ve found our fix in this incredibly extra breakfast at a coffee joint:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhnsoyOHkLY
Just what you’d expect from the hipster capital of Australia, the impenetrably trendy city of, uh, Newcastle.
The photo of the dish was posted by local Huon Oliver, who described it as “tasty but ridiculous“. While they don’t appear to have Vegemite toast on their current menu, they’ve got a “Sourdough w/ butter” on there for $8, which I imagine would put the price in around the same ballpark.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to add some pizzazz to an unmistakably mundane dish, but there is a technical issue with this method of presentation: putting the butter to the side instead of spreading it on the hot toast immediately doesn’t allow it to properly soak into the bread.
According to News.com.au, Core Espresso manager Emma Reid has said they might look into that issue:
“If the consensus is that butter needs to be on the toast as soon as it hits the table, we’re happy to change the dish. We’re all about pleasing our customers so we are happy to make adjustments.”
Otherwise, they’re pretty happy with what they’re doing:
Even though they’re only ordering Vegemite on toast, we want our customers to know a little bit of care is being put into the dish. It’s nice to put a nice quenelle on the plate. . . We all got a good laugh out of it. We’re in the business of making people smile and serving good coffee and we thought the comments were hilarious.
Newcastle, what a city.
