Cafe Rosamond

Pierre Roelof is a genious!
I’ve always said that I could eat dessert for entrée, main and well, dessert.
And VOila! I am having my three course dessert here at Rosamond’s Thursday night dessert degustations by Pierre Roelof.
Opening its door at 7 pm every Thursday night, it’s first come best dressed. We didn’t have to arrive super early and there was a couple of seats left for a 7.30 latecomer. however, any later than that, you will have to leave your name down for a later seating.
The café is located on Charles st, off Smith st.
Appetizer is a Snickers Test Tube, complex with so many different texture, fun to eat and yum! just Yum!
First Course is a light plate with mandarin and cardamom theme, light and delicious, I couldn’t get enough and wanted to lick that plate clean!
Second course called «in the middle» is a glass of Mango granita, raspberry, tapioca, coconut, crushed nuts. It has an Asian dessert flavour. Filling and tasty, it’s satisfying mouthfuls.
final course is a banana cake, cannelloni beans, it’s CRAZY! beans in dessert! Gosh
the flavours just works. So complex but they all work so well,
i suggest you get here if you can before Roelof serves his last Rosamond’s dessert nights this year!

I love this cute friendly no fuss café.
They have Australian favourites — avo on toast, great cheap egg brekky dishes and amazing coffee as Melbourne is well known for.
Small and w some share tables, their produce is stacked around the little homey café.
Wait staff are casual but not in a «too cool» way — more in «it feels like my brother works here» way.
Order eggs & coffee especially if you are having an early morning meeting or breakfast in an area where nothing much is open…
Then sit on the little bench outside in the sun, or on the comfortable wrap around bench tables inside.

Constructing sweet irresistibles for an elite group of no more than 15 – 20 patrons in each of 2 or 3 sessions, every Thursday evening, this dessert master has stationed his headquarters in the tiny kitchen of Café Rosamond — a little hide-​hole with dated furnishings, entered via an inconspicuous entrance opposite a soldier troop of garbage bins, around the corner of gritty Smith Street.
…Integrating whimsical, well-​balanced spectrums of textures and flavours, the visually stunning and delight-​in-​mouth deconstructed creations conjured by the dessert maestro at Café Rosamond poses a sophisticated challenge to, and indeed, could be said to surpass the infuriatingly careless dabbling at the finale of a meal by an overwhelming number of restaurants and other dining venues. Redefining what a meal should be (dessert-​only, oh yes please), Dessert Evenings at Café Rosamond deserve a permanency in the fleeting «pop-​up» dining landscape — they are to MoMo & Coco what the luminous white pebbles were to Hansel and Gretel. If fairy tales could be re-​written, follow the weekly moonlit trail to Café Rosamond, and to a happy ending, where desserts and sweet irresistibles live forever and happily ever after.

I discovered Café Rosamond one day when I found myself with too much time on my hands, walking up and down Smith St waiting for a friend, we hadn’t settled on a place yet, so on spying this little one around a corner I made plans there and then.
Turns out that I’d only just discovered what the rest of Collingwood had known for a while. A great place with little space, pretty faces and something else that rhymes with ace.
Being such a tiny and cute space it will only take about fifteen people to try and sit inside and eat for the place to feel claustrophobic. There was a school group waiting for others to join them for coffee, and had taken up most of the space. Lunch date denied.
The service is what you expect from the pretentious, the waiters who have better things to do that serve you. Maybe it was a bad day and the place was a little full but I didn’t expect to wait that long. Rosamond does good coffee that coupled with the service makes it nothing to write home about, as with the food. Good basics — the thing they do is baguettes — that kind of leave you expecting more for the kind of space.
Another thing I did notice was several people walking out without paying. Maybe that’s what you get for having such and Ace place of little space and pretty faces.
See for yourself, if you’re not a fan the rest of Smith St is thirty seconds away.

Café Rosamond is yet another example of the many ‘no kitchen’ eateries. In fact they were probably one of the earlier examples of those cafes that get by with serving up a range of food cooked on nothing more than a hot plate, toaster and a jaffle maker.
As such the menu is quite simple, but very tasty. They have a massive range of jaffles (essentially the trendy term for a toasted sandwich if you were wondering) and some pretty fresh salads, amongst some classics like baked beans on toast.
The coffee at Rosamond is pretty awesome too. Which is a good thing, because you may just have to order a take-​away as this place is pretty tiny and pretty popular, so seating can be a serious issue upon occasion.

Yet another tiny backspace turned into a café in Fitzroy — and yet another happy reviewer enjoying the experience.
Rosamond has been here for a while and has been gaining popularity, or maybe just recognition, quite steadily. A lot of that recognition would be due to Pierre Roelofs — a mega award winning pastry chef that has turned Thursday night at Rosamond into a deliciously sweet affair.
From 7pm until 11 each week, you can sample some of the best deserts you will ever try — and the best thing is that there is a brand new menu each week! Get there early to avoid the queue and don’t even try to book ahead.
This is a tiny café, seriously! I’m a pretty tall guy, and I kinda feel that I walk in to a doll’s house when I’m there. Yet I will continue to go back because the place is seriously cool. Great food and a quality strong coffee and the afternoon sun streaming through the window.

This place is becoming a bit of an institution down this part (the good part) of Fitzroy and for good reason. I don’t really dig on these kind of hole-​in-​the-​wall style cafes as a general rule of thumb as the interiors often feel to cramped and you can’t rely on soft acoustics while sipping your latte. Rosamond circumvent these issues with clever layout and good music, so you need not be put off by the size — there’s usually somewhere relatively comfortable to perch.
The coffee here is fuckin’ excellent in my experiences, which have been many but not so much in the last six months or so. They have always retained that coffee-​centric attitude though, so I can’t see that changing too much. The food is understated and tasty also. They have a sandwich called the ‘Di’ or something (a remnant from a previous owner) and it will change your thinking on what is possible with a café sandwich. The kitchen space is limited, which is reflected in the menu. But sometimes limitations just mean the focus returns to quality. This has always rang true for Rosamond.

I’d always heard people talking about Rosamond, all my ‘cool’ friends enjoyed popping in for a coffee or two and they had always made it sound so exclusive. Upon my first visit I realised why, it is bloody tiny.
Rosamond reminds me a lot of a bomb bunker your nan might have in her backyard, it is just a bit below street level with only a few windows to let the light in. It must only have 10 to 15 tables available so you’re very lucky if you snag one.
The food itself is that classic Northside breakfast — porridge, free range eggs and some seriously sensational coffee. I have heard that the previous owners of Rosamond made their meals a lot bigger, but I was pretty content with my serving size.
My only beef with Rosamond is that the guys behind the counter seemed just a bit too cool to serve us. We headed up to the counter to order and my friend requested some extra avocado with her eggs, unfortunately it was pretty clear that the waitress was not listening. She repeated it and got a slight eye-​roll with a «yeah, I heard you» look. Of course, when we got out meals there was no extra avocado.
But look, it is a really quaint and quirky little venue with some fantastic food and coffee so check it out if you are strolling down the ever-​exciting Smith street.

Tucked just off Smith, on a sleepy little residential street (just near Somebuddy Loves You), is an adorable, tiny little café. Great coffees, DIVINE mochas, pretty darn good brekkie even.
That is just where this goodness begins…
Every Thursday evening, starting at 7, this place turns into the center of the dessert universe! Now, I don’t mean ice cream and cookies. Not even a plain old crème brûlée. No, this is experimentally delicious, synthesis of flavours, explosions of rich creamy chocolaty fruity goodness!
You may want to get there pretty early to ensure you snag a seat and/​or table, because as I mentioned this place is TINY. But bring a friend or lover, because you really want to share this experience (and the plates and prices are set up best for that too).
You’ll thank me later.