See you at The Copper Mill

In recent times I'd gotten a little bored with café breakfasts - unfortunately, eggs are eggs to me. And then a little local café comes along and changes all that.

At The Copper Mill on Mitchell Road in an area some call Alexandria and some call Erskineville, bacon and eggs are most certainly not just bacon and eggs. Most surprising is that the café doesn't really have a proper kitchen, but just a stovetop or two and a benchtop grill.

Cappuccino and watermelon, apple and mint juice from The Copper Mill,
Mitchell Road, Alexandria

With minimal outdoor seating and hipster-fied interiors, The Copper Mill is a spacious little venue that clearly values comfort over crowds.

Decorated with the occasional item of copper cookware, the high ceilings of the space and its well-spaced tables lend it well to relaxed brunching and munching on some Latin-inspired brekky bits.

I still like cappuccinos because of the chocolate powder and foam, giving me the slightest of sugar hits with the Golden Cobra beans on a weekend morning.

Meanwhile, the watermelon and apple juice is freshly juiced and served with ice, mint leaves and a striped paper straw.

Coddled egg with kumera mash, parsley and sourdough soldiers with bacon side

And behold, the breakfast game-changer - for me anyway. Sure, the food took a good while to get to us but the coddled egg in the jar with kumera sweet potato mash has given me faith in breakfast again.

All it took was a glass jar, half-filled with sweet, creamy and surely healthy sweet potato mash and topped with an egg that's then basically steamed in the jar to a firm yolk; the way I prefer it.

Garnished with chopped parsley, the egg is served with wedges of buttered sourdough to which I added a side of bacon. A bit of everything in one mouthful was the way to breakfast heaven.

Peruvian bacon and egg roll 

Classic bacon rashers get dumped for pork belly in the Peruvian take on a bacon and egg roll. Encased in a chewy white roll were seasoned pork belly chicharron, a runny sunny-side-up egg and the same kumera mash; then pimped up with Spanish onion salsa criolla and lemon-flavoured mayonnaise.

A large mouthful to handle, this Peruvian-accented breakfast-in-two-hands was a filling twist on a classic Aussie breakfast that will easily become a signature offering at The Copper Mill.

So perhaps I'll see you at The Copper Mill soon, where breakfast takes a while but where eggs ain't eggs.