When we’re talking about Melbourne’s best brunch spots, you’d typically think Fitzroy, Brunswick or areas around the CBD. I bet Ascot Vale didn’t even cross your mind.

Well guess what ? The suburbs are stepping up their brunch game and No.19 is Ascot Vale’s knight in shining armour.

I’ve been nagging Johnny for weeks to try out No.19 but he refuses to brunch in the west.

Until I showed him what all our fellow foodies on Instagram were ranting about…

We were bouldering at Footscray Park that morning anyways so after our bodies gave up on us, our tummies carried us over to No.19.

Google said it’d be an 8 minute drive…we made it in 5, I guess Google isn’t always right.

We found parking pretty easily on the side streets next to a pet coin wash. When we got to the cafe, we were instantly mesmerised by the layout.

Johnny kept saying how it felt like we were in a movie, the romantic kind of course. I was in awe as the waitress walked us over to our table. We were seated right beside the kitchen, with a street lamp themed light overlooking our seats. Which we later found out would be the key reason to why most our photos turned out so goddamn good! It’s all in the lighting guys, the only food photography tip you’ll ever need.

We struggled to pick from the menu because we literally wanted to order everything! I can’t remember if that was because we were so hangry after bouldering or everything on the menu sounded so good.

10 hours of indecisiveness later we settled with an acai bowl, eggs benedict and cherry bombe to share. As usual, Johnny went for the berry smoothie and I treated myself to a warm hot chocolate. I deserved it, especially after that devil put me through another hell session of bouldering. Let’s not get started about that.

We’ve never actually had an acai bowl before so we were really excited to see what all the fuss was about. The waitress brought our drinks out first but we set it aside and waited for all the food to arrive. All the foodies will understand exactly what I’m talking about.

We didn’t wait too long for the food, it came out all at once. The plating looked spectacular, every little detail was perfect. Our favourite was the acai bowl, it was like a bowl of rainbow and the colourful variety of fruits made us feel so bad for digging into it.

The cherry bombe was crafted together like a piece of art, it sat on the plate demanding a pitch perfect snap.

The eggs benny had a twist… it was served with Korean style bulgogi beef. You heard me right… bloody bulgogi beef, seriously. Unreal!

After all the essential snaps and more snaps, we finally dug into our brunch. Our acai bowl virginity had finally been taken and it was literally life changing. Johnny stole the whole spoonful of peanut butter on top and left me peanut-butter-less. The best thing about the acai bowl was that you felt so healthy afterwards. We can finally have a fulfilling brunch minus the food coma.

The eggs benedict was mindblowing, I fell in love with it right after the first bite. Perfectly poached eggs, amazing bulgogi beef and it left me wanting more.

The highlight of the day was the cherry bombe. We never like to have sweets early in the day but we made an exception just for today… Sonya insisted. We were left speechless by how amazing it tasted, the flavours gave my tastebuds a mini orgasm.

If you love sweets, then this is a must… even if you’re not usually a sweets sorta person, you’ve got to make an exception for this one. It’ll be worth it, we promise!

After our meal, we laughed about how hard it was to convince Johnny to come here and now he doesn’t even want to leave. The cafe that officially changed Johnny’s thoughts on brunching in Melbourne’s west. It didn’t take much convincing at all after that to get him to try Braybrook Station, but that’s for our next blog post.

We hope you enjoyed our very first food blog post and will stay tuned for our next food adventure!

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