Dinner has changed. Once, everyone ordered his or her own dish. Now we’re more likely to put everything in the centre and share (a method staff still insist on explaining to us). Salty food critics have no patience for it, but they’re in the minority. Sharing is fun, and there’s no chance of menu envy.

So why aren’t we sharing breakfast too?

That’s the question Erika Geraerts, Charl Laubscher and their three partners have been asking at their cafe Little Big Sugar Salt in Abbotsford.

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“We always laugh at how at every restaurant you go to the first thing the waiter says is, ‘The menu is designed to share’, as if that’s a new idea,” Geraerts says.

Enter Eggs With Friends. Everyone gets an empty plate, and a heap of small dishes come out in a steady stream. $35 per person buys a big pot of batch brew by Coffee Supreme and two courses of breakfast: savoury, followed by sweet.

“We wanted to give people the chance to try everything on our menu and not be limited to their habitual order,” Geraerts says. “We believe in our chefs and what they can do.”

So will you after scooping gruyere scrambled eggs from a big cast-iron platter, or savouring a thick slice of sweet potato baked in its skin and daubed with cashew cream.

The menu also includes baked salmon topped with celeriac and apple; a small ramekin of pickles and other fermented stuff; and “zoodles” (zucchini noodles) with silverbeet. And separate bowls of haloumi, avocado and bacon, of course.

The sweet course includes fruit salad; house-made granola; banana-oat waffles with coconut yoghurt and more.

After polishing all this off, you’ll feel like you’ve just done the Christmas Day lunch/dinner double. But making customers absurdly full isn’t why Eggs With Friends exists – it’s more about removing the paralysing indecision many of us feel on weekends.

Little Big Sugar Salt
Corner Victoria and Lithgow Streets, Abbotsford
(03) 9427 8818

Hours:
Mon to Fri 7.30am–3pm
Sat & Sun 8am–3.30pm

lbsscafe.com