Sitting unassumingly at the quiet end of Flinders Lane, The Grain Store offers a modern insight into traditional European cooking.
It strives on the source of its ingredients, enlisting local CERES Fair Food to procure seasonal, organic produce. The architecture of timber flooring and tables, marble benches, exposed ceiling and a sliding barn door to separate the dinner dining area introduces a sleek, modern and inviting ambience.
The lunch food menu is an eclectic mix of breakfast and lunch with creative dishes. Its focus is on combinations less travelled with the use of ingredients such as black pudding, goji berries and goats curd. Complimented with a selection of espresso and filter coffee from Sensory Lab and a dinner menu, The Grain Store offers the complete package, adding to the growing trend of cafes venturing into all-day service.
On this visit, I ordered the Spiced Spear Creek Dorper lamb loin with skordalia, asparagus, beans, goats yoghurt and pistachio gremolata, topped with sweet potato crisps. This tantalising flavour combination harnesses the light tang of the goats yoghurts and compliments it with the creamy skordalia, completing the tender, juicy cuts of lamb loin. The coffee also complimented the flavours well.
This dish, although quite filling and approaching dinner portion size, still left room for something sweet. I opted for the wildly acclaimed freshly baked to order chocolate chip cookies. There is a wait time of roughly ten minutes to allow for baking but it is perfectly reasonable after experiencing the result. Four hot, not too hard but not too soft, cookies with the chocolate chips still in a melted, almost thick syrupy, state. Simply divine. A glass of milk on the side to wash the cookies down with forms the perfect compliment.
Although maybe counteracted by the quality, there is a small critique needed of the pricing. The lamb loin dish was $29 which is on the high side of lunch time pricing at a cafe. The freshly baked cookies were a very reasonable $10.
A return visit for dinner service is definitely necessary at this exciting inner city gem.