Lolo & Wren

I’ve bookmarked LoLo and Wren to try for some time before finally making it there on a Sunday morning.
Located on Albion st underneath an apartment block, this café shares the venue with a few other local eats and an IGA. Nice and handy for the locals.
I really want to like the café, staff are friendly and welcoming. Food however in my opinion is just ok. Starting with drinks, watermelon juice is sugared and watered. Not cool and not cool to water and sugar down something as simple as watermelon juice. Big no no. My Chai latte was way too sweet.
We ordered 2 burgers, the chicken and soft shell crab burger. Unpractical and really difficult to eat, maybe I haven’t mastered the skills of manoeuvering giant burgers.
The soft shell crab is half crab half fishcake. No light fried batter here, instead it’s a thick fishcake like mixture wrapped around the crab. Which is fine if I ordered fishcake but not when I expected soft shell crab. I can’t tell how much crab vs mince fish make up this dish. It’s a real shame.
The ploughmans brunch looks great, but mushroom/​onion was way too sweet and made the dish slightly unbalanced.
Positive thing about the dish is its big generous serving. However my overall impression of the café is ok for an easy local walk to brunch kinda day only or if you are in the area.
With many other cafes within 10mins drive that serves amazing food, (and not water down their watermelon juice or dilute their crab with fishcake) I don’t think I will be making a trip back here.

My absolute favourite place!
Good food, chill vibes & always good service.
Most importantly, great coffee.

Maybe I’m the only one, maybe there’s a tonne of us out there, but any café breakfast featuring Meredith Dairy goat’s feta is the breakfast for me. I’ve tried MDGF breakfasts all over the Northside of Melbourne and have noticed a reasonable proportion are pretty stingy on the cheese when it comes to it. Not Lolo & Wren. Their corn and zucchini fritters with chili jam, salsa and Meredith Dairy Goat’s Feta is spot on — not stingy at all. The fritters themselves are terrific — crunchy and fluffy and a bit more upmarket than your standard fritter, presented thoughtfully with avocado smash and young lettuce. Have to say, even without my beloved MDGF, this would have earned an A in my book. Nice work, L&W. Thanks for the great bfast.

I have been going to Lolo and Wren since the day it opened. The food is always fresh and cooked to perfection, 5 Senses coffee well made every time, dog friendly, you can’t go wrong

What a delight on a chilly Sunday morning. Service great, porridge most substantial and delicious. Can’t wait to return but will it be for breakfast or lunch?

Went here for breakfast with a friend on the weekend and it was completely amazing. The menu is packed with delicious and interesting options, to the point that we had to ask for help to choose! the food was amazing, and coffee and chili hot chocolate both incredible. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but the friendly staff and drool invoking menu options make it well worth checking out.

Great location, takes a bit of effort to get there.
Newer development, set within an apartment complex.
Excellent effort in creating the post-​modern specialty coffee place, recycled shipping container crates theme, bench, communal tall table … nice ambiance.
On the coffee side, Five Senses and Seven Seeds … always good reliable beans.
Will try those yummy looking food out of the kitchen next time.

Should really keep this place to myself BUT seeing as it was already chockablock before this review I think the locals already know.
This place is hands down my favourite place for breakfast in Melbourne. Coffee is delicious, served at perfect temperature and they have bonsoy. We both ordered the big brekky $ 18.50 and everything was generous and cooked to perfection. Perfect poached free-​range eggs. Mushrooms, pork sausage, potato rosti, 3 rashes of bacon, tomato relish and sourdough toast. We were both very happy and full after our selection but watching them bring out everyone else’s plates was so tempting.
Service was on point and you weren’t squished into a seat or rushed with your meal despite the endless stream of people in and out.
We were house hunting today and thought we’d try and found a local café and boy are we glad we stumbled upon Lolo & Wren!
Will we be back? Most definitely!!!

I have been coming to Lolo since it opened and I still love this place. The coffee is good but the food is really special. You don’t just get a banana porridge here, you get a porridge with caramalized banana, stewed dates, dulce de leche (which is a beautiful soft caramel) and toasted coconut crumble. Needless to say its to die for. Their Chorizo Cazuela is amazing too. A beautiful ragu with chickpeas and chorizo with a cheese crumble. Yum, Yum, Yum! I could go on about the deliciousness of the menu and there is something here for everyone. They also have seasonal specials to try as well. The chef/​owner Franco and his wife Karen are lovely and work really hard to make this an amazing place. In fact all the staff are accommodating, pleasant and professional. This has become a real destination café, I’m just glad I live close by!

Really good food, and exceptionally good coffee. Very very few places I’ve been to are better than this!

Good produce done well. A nice addition to the area and worth a visit if passing. Great one for locals.

I had an inner war raging all day, debating whether to give Lolo & Wren 2 or 3 stars. In the end I decided 3 for a few reasons. Our meals were on the verge of greatness. Yummy fresh produce and great portion sizes and really that’s what I went out for today, a delicious brunch with my girlfriends.
The downside was the coffee, and for me, the hot chocolate. So bitter I couldn’t even drink, not even after adding sugar. I don’t drink coffee, but I do know my friend, and when she can’t finish off a cappuccino, something’s not quite right with it.
We had two ladies who served us and one was great, outstanding even, but the other… Let’s just say I’m still waiting for a glass of water, and a friendly smile wouldn’t have gone astray.
So overall everything sort of balanced out, earning Lolo & Wren three stars from me. I must admit I saw some tasty meals come out and will probably be back, but I’ll be avoiding the hot chocolate’s.

I have been here a number of times over the last 9 months for breakkie, lunch and coffees. Every time the food has been of high quality as is the service. Today I had poached eggs, with a side order of avocado and home made tomato relish which came in a timely manner. The eggs were perfect on a slice of sour dough toast, with a generous half an avocado sliced on the other piece of toast. The tomato relish was tasty and the avocado came with a lemon wedge. Coffee ¹⁰⁄₁₀. This place has become a very popular breakfast place for weekends and a booking is recommended. Park ing is available on the side of the apartments as well as the obligatory outdoor seating.

Fantastic service and delicious foods and coffees.
I went there on a busy Sunday morning, and despite that our coffees were out very quickly. It took a little longer to take out orders, but being able to sit outside in the sunshine meant we weren’t watching the clock.
I ended up with the pancakes with berry compote, almond praline and mascarpone. My friend had the avocado bruschetta. Both were delicious, and honestly despite them apologising for the delay, it didn’t feel like it.
Parking was straight forward around the corner and underneath if you needed it.

Somewhere off the beaten track, in a side street, down a hill tucked under a new block of apartments is a small little café called Lolo & Wren. It is a bit hard to find — its Google Map pin is a bit off but don’t let that stop you.
The good bits.
* They know what good service is! Every coffee shop owner needs to have breakfast here and see the effect of good, efficient service.
* They know how to deal with children. I know most places have a high chair and some pencils but they have gone out of their way to have a stash of ‘take and toss’ sippy cups for toddlers and they do a good mashup of takeaway cups with straws for the older kids
* The space is just nice to look at! I love the bench made from old pallets!
The great bits!
* The coffee! Oh the coffee… and the staff knew (maybe they saw the look in my eye) to take my coffee order as they were handing over the breakfast menu
* The food was great! You must try the pancakes
All in all, this is a great place for a weekend breakfast, we will be back!

Coffee is okay – espresso lacks a little flavour that you usually get with Five Senses. They do serve it with a chocolate coffee bean and a shot of soda water, which is a nice touch.
Food is tasty and well portioned for the price; baked beans español were huge, and come covered with manchego. Definite recommendation.
However, the atmosphere is a bit of a key down – it feels both a little too forced in some respects (wait staff in matching shirts and aprons, teal crockery and twee looking menu) and too suburban in others (plain white wall and ceiling, cheap looking furniture, blue glasses and multicoloured straws).
Worth a look if you live nearby, but there are better options available.

Have to balance out the previous reviewer a bit here. We just had lunch at this bright and shiny new café in Brunswick West. Food was excellent — we had the chorizo meatball sliders and the home made baked beans. Healthy servings and very tasty. For originality, it’s way ahead of a lot of the competition in the wider Brunswick area.
Then the coffee: just one long black, but PERFECT. Five Senses is a good coffee anyway, but a lot of places overheat or burn it. Here the barista was clearly paying a lot of attention to what he was doing. The coffee is served at the perfect temperature, with a rich crema and very smooth texture and flavour. Hot water on the side, plus a shot glass of soda water and a choc coated bean — nice touches. I’ll be back for more.
[I personally would take the previous reviewers comments about the milk with a grain of salt — how he can be sure his illness was caused by this place beats me, and virtually every café in Melbourne leaves milk out a little while from time to time.]

Let me start off by saying that I only gave it 2 stars because I got an upset stomach from Lolo & Wren. Not quite food poisoning, but bad nonetheless. I got it because I think they left the milk out on the counter for a while, and I happened to order a coffee.
The food is not bad. But it is also not great. Which I think in Melbourne is a deadly thing. It can probably survive as a suburb café (Brunswick West), but it won’t draw the crowds from the city or anyone who needs to travel. They serve Five Senses coffee (ok except for the milk incident).
I ordered the Goodison Breakfast (their version of a big breakfast), which read well on the menu. Pork & fennel sausage, field mushrooms, 2 eggs, bacon & potato rosti. Unfortunately the dish itself was quite lacklustre. Potato rosti was bland and under-​seasoned, bacon was tough and stringy, and the mushrooms were drowning in butter.
My friend ordered the Hog’s Pudding with trotter & black pudding, sage & onion relish, and green apple with parsley. She thought it was ok only.
Service was on the ball, friendly and helpful. But the food wasn’t polished, and for Melbourne, that could be the sink-​or-​swim decider. I rest my case.