hello all, recently we went to cavalier special coffee at st leonards! it’s an easy walk from st leonards station. we went there on a sunday afternoon for lunch and was greeted by a huge queue, and literally waited over an hour to get a seat at the table! i am normally pretty impatient when it comes to waiting to eat but we did for this one. did it deliver? in general, the truffle is better than balla at the star, being more flavoursome and intense. the place is nice and cosy and you can see the chefs and barista in action.
have a look at the menu here. in general, you can add truffle to almost anything for an extra $12, and that’s what we did, with the exception of our coffee and french toast order.
c’s dad ordered a cappucino ($3.50) which was served promptly. all other dishes required a further wait of about 15 minutes in addition to our wait time to get in; this place is really popular!
we got the beef brisket ($20 + $12 for truffle). c thought the celeriac cream was good. i thought that the brisket could be a lot more melt-in-your-mouth given the 15 hour slow cook in the description, however it was not bad. the poached egg was perfect and gave the required egg-porn view. this dish was also served with croissants to mop up the sauce. yum.
the mac and cheese ($18 + $12 for truffle) was my favourite dish of the day. it had amazing textures, from crispy and crunchy puffs to al dente pasta to creamy egg yolk. it was also wonderfully cheesy and i felt that the truffle really added to the dish.
truffle benny ($22 + $12 for truffle) was my least favourite of the day; to me it tasted like a ham on bread with some egg and truffle (which it essentially is, however, i was looking for more due to the price factor).
we shared a tiramisu french toast ($18) for dessert. this was a very popular dish with many patrons ordering it so we wanted part of the action. the coffee cream was absolutely spot on, chocolate soil was crunchy and the bread amazing. i had a sour hit in one of my bites that i can’t put my finger on. c’s mum proposed that this was caused by the rum in the french toast, however, it doesn’t take away from the dish at all. one of the best on the day as well!
it was a fairly expensive meal, and we did wait more than an hour to get in and eat. my suggestion is to try some of the dishes out, especially the mac and cheese (and truffle), and do it on a weekday which should be less busy.
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