Grigons & Orr, North Melbourne

Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage, and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon, and spam; egg, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato, and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam; or Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and a fried egg on top, and spam - Monty Python breakfast menu

Unfortunately there was only one spam dish on the menu at Grigons & Orr, 445 Queensberry Street (corner of Chetwynd), North Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9663 5192. Because spam was the highlight of the pan fried spiced ham topped with scrambled egg and drizzled with truffle oil. And you know something's wrong when the highlight came straight from a tin.



The eggs were your average scrambled eggs. The toast was your average thin-sliced toast. And the truffle oil was so lightly drizzled as to escape detection by my amateur taste buds. This may have been the desired outcome of an ingenious plan to cast spam as the spicy star on a bland stage devoid of distracting flavours. Or it may have been a bad day in the kitchen. It was certainly a bad day for hash browns. Mine was extremely doughy and barely palatable.

Could this really be the same place that Preston, Valent and the copycats had raved about? Was it my fault for ordering spam spam spam and eggs, rather than apple fritters, cous cous porridge, or pancakes with Barbados cream? Maybe so (although others have slammed the pancakes).

It is a quaint little venue. They do sell mixed lollies (whoopee). The coffee is good. And the staff are friendly. But, in my biased opinion, if the eggs aren't up to snuff, who gives a crap about crocheted blankets?

13/20 "spam"