Small Block

Greeted with a warm beautiful smile by Celia the gorgeous blonde young lady who runs this delightful little café in the heart of brunswick east, i have made this my go to breakfast café for those rare weekdays off work. Everything is delicious and the menu is flexible if you desire mixing in something extra to your order.
Staff are happy and friendly which is rare in a lot of cafes these days, and it shows in the warm inviting atmosphere when you walk through the door. If you are in the area definitely pop in, the coffee is superb and food very satisfyingly scrumptious.

First time here and had a great breakfast, I ordered the Huevos rancheros and the salsa on top was so nice and fresh, really good and tasty!

Used to work close by, and was the first place (maybe 8 years + ago) to get a great coffee. Glad to see it still going well, and are keeping up with their great reputation.1^st one of their kind in a now bustling part of Lygon street, good work!

Small block is a great breakfast café. The people who work there are friendly and helpful but not overbearing at all. The place definitely has a family atmosphere, with regulars coming in and chatting with the staff over their morning coffee or breakfast. The eggs Benedict was my definition of perfection, but if that’s not your cup of tea their menu has a wide variety of options.

I have been going to Small Block for, well… more than seven years now. (Gosh has it been that long!) Not much has changed. The menu is still excellent and the coffee good. There was a period where this moderately sized café was packed to the brim every weekend making it impossible to navigate with a pram and toddlers but with the emergence or many cafes in the area this has changed and seating is easier. Weekdays have always been good.
The summer breakfast is a fantastic mix of feta, eggs, toast, beetroot relish, spinach and avacado, a forkful of each element at once is simply amazing. My son cannot go past the eggs Benny, he begs us to come her for those.
The ricotta pancakes are my daughters favourite and I am always happy to provide as the Barbados cream and pear is unique and totally yummy. (Let’s just say she doesn’t get to eat it by herself!)
Small block has been one of my favourite cafes for years and I’m hope it will continue to be for years to come. But I do feel it needs a bit of a Reno (both in food and décor) if it wants to stay a favourite in the area.
Expect to pay an average of around $ 19 per person with a meal and coffee. That’s good value for this area.

Every element of my experience today was utterly lacking. The staff were slow, distant and distracted. The coffee was insipid and the cup of my partner’s coffee was covered in fluff.
I could put up with these things if the food had been good. It wasn’t remotely.
Poached eggs so cooked they could have been hard boiled; a chili jam that lacks sweetness or nuanced flavour; undercooked, doughy corn fritters (served with sour cream for some inexplicable reason); bacon served with the rind attached; a rarebit that amounted to cheese on a barely toasted bagel.
I will compliment them on the prices: they are generally quite low. Considering how bad the food (and service is) this amounts to the only saving grace of the café.
I will never come here again.

Items forgotten from my order and menu items standard. good hashbrowns,

I love this place. So much so, that’s it going to start a new list–
Favourite spots of Melbourne. This is the place that you could imagine
is run by your friends. It’s even the café that would spring up in the back
of a mate’s large house. It has that homely feel.
Its great value too; I got a goats cheese something or other on toast
for around $ 11 and it was a decent size. Unlike most places these days
which charge a king’s ransom for a single curd of goat’s cheese and
and 20 cent sized piece of toast. One is well accommodated here. Of course
there’s much more to the café than this. More breakfast food one would
Imagine too. Healthy servings I would imagine too.
Good coffee, and from memory drink-​y things. It’s kind outta the way, but
it was on another accidental occasion that i found this. being dropped
an odd way home, i scanned the length of lygon street, to see what’s
happening these day. This place caught my eye. «Oohhh, I have to go
there, it looks rad! It has a bicycle parking bay thing.» I did go there
it was rad. Which reminds me, i should go back so I can eat something
more.

Dear S-​Block,
You know after all this time I still have serious like for you. That banana french toast may be long gone, but we still hang out a few times a year, right? Your summer breakfast — the sort of artful clash of colorful, flavorsome goop that an art-​making art-​person may get very excited about — still sits in the all-​time top10 café breks of my heart. Plus there’s the hotcakes with the pear and effed up barbados cream aaand your on-​the-​money eggs benny. Coffee is solid and service is just the right balance of familiar & efficient, but c’mon dude… why do you persist with those freakin’ chairs inside? Y’know, the ones you built for that small humanoid guy semi-​recently discovered in Indonesia, even though he won’t ever sit on them BECAUSE HE’S DEAD. My butt isn’t big or anything, it’s a normal, but it just can’t cope with that kind of discomfort for more than 25 minutes. I can’t be the only one feeling this, can I? Sigh. Anyways, see you soon-​ish.

This place is always packed in the mornings and especially on weekends so you know it has to be pretty good. It’s quite old but they’ve decorated the interior quite nicely and it has a bit of a retro feel about it which always gets a tick from me.
Small Block offers you a choice between the all-​day brekkie or off menu as well.
I had a flat white and the Schnitzel sandwich with potatoes, gherkin and dill salad which was nice.
Friendly staff, good food, broad menu — I will definitely be going back some other time.

Hands down my favourite breakfast spot on Lygon St. I love a place that makes great coffee and offers not only all day breakfast, but lets you order off menu for those hungover days when you’re feeling a bit picky.
You’ll have to wait for a table sometimes on the weekend but I find it’s usually worth it.

The two things worth draggin me to this cute little café?
1. all-​day, huge plates of brekkie
2. amazing steak sandwich. super yum, because sometimes you can’t even bite into and tear apart a steak sandwich without cutting the roof of your mouth and not actually breaking apart the steak. this one is good.

This was one of the first contemporary cafés to hit the northern part of Lygon Street and has heralded a wave of followers. Simply yet stylishly decorated the interior has a slight industrial feel.
The café is a conversion of an old house. The front room, that contains the service area opens up to another cosy lounge room. The carpets have been lifted and the concrete floor has been polished.
The coffee here is outstanding, every time I try it, it simply blows me away. The seasonal menu will tempt you to eat everything, and you should, just maybe not all at once. If you going to start somewhere, please try the mushrooms, they are divine.
Small block also have the smallest outside area of any café, anywhere. Cosy enough to pop out for a fag.

The breakfast scene is pretty happening in Brunswick East. There are a wealth of really good cafes and it has to be considered a breakfast hotspot. Small Block is probably one of the originals and has been serving great coffee and a delicious menu the whole time I’ve lived in Melbourne.
The thing that is great about Small Block is also the thing that is annoying. Its small size (as the name suggests) gives it a really intimate feel and the service is very personal. But this is also a downside because you wanna eat here but can’t because it gets packed and is very popular.
If you aren’t starving I’d say it is worth the wait. See if you can grab a coffee outside and watch the world go round. If you are ravenous, there are plenty of places round the corner.

Great coffee, nice setup, friendly staff, just don’t go when it’s almost closing time or they’ll hassle you until you’re uncomfortable enough to leave quick smart.

There are so many great cafes to choose from in this part of Brunswick East these days, and Small Block is amongst the best of them. It’s been around a few years and has consistently delivered the goods, namely huge, all day breakfasts and coffee just as everyone likes it.
My go-​to breakfast here is the summer breakfast, which despite the name, is just as delicious and filling in colder months as it is in balmy weather. It’s a dreamy combination of perfectly cooked eggs served on buttered toast surrounded by spinach, beetroot relish, feta and avocado. Other notables are the ricotta pancakes with saffron pears and Barbados cream, and the corn fritters with chilli jam. If you’re nipping in for a quick coffee and something sweet on the side, you simply must give the melty, custardy Portuguese tarts a try.
Service can be slow at times, but this isn’t the kind of place you want to rush away from anyway. Depending on the time of day, you may be swamped by neighbourhood hipsters, but hopefully there will be a few normal folk in there too should you decide to drop in. It’s nice inside especially at the corner tables in the back room or by the front window where you can watch the Lygon Street action, but my favourite spot, especially on a sunny afternoon, are the outside tables facing out onto Piera Street.

When Small Block came to Brunswick East there weren’t very many brunch options. Now, there are more brunch options, but Small Block is still ahead of the crowd.
Located in an industrial designed venue with polished concrete floors, metal and vinyl chairs, and wooden boxes that pose as outdoor chairs, Small Block fits in perfectly with the hip family lifestyle of Brunswick East. There are bike racks at the front and toys for kids to play with in the restaurant.
The coffee, which is Supreme, was done well. The food came out in a timely manner. Although I’ve had better Eggs Benedict, I couldn’t find any significant faults with the dish. The poached eggs were cooked perfectly — when I sliced through them, the yolk flowed out. The hollandaise was nice and light, perhaps too buttery in taste, but overall, the dish was done well and it tasted good. The service was also good — I was greeted when I arrived and had coffee within the first 10 minutes.