The Grain Store

I went here for breakfast and found it to be very good. It has good seating and a good assortment of option for breakfast. The coffee was excellent. I had the Chilli and Fennel Sausage and it was excellent as well. The poached egg was cook just right and the butternut hash was a very good surprise. What a great combination! The staff was very friendly and attentive. I went with a group and all enjoyed the experience!

Yummmmm food mixed with great service = perfect Sunday brekky.
The place was pumping but the staff run a fabulously tight ship and everything happened pretty quickly, never having to wait for food, coffee or attention.
Next time I visit Melbourne I’ll be back. Really impressed.

This place is amazing! I was keen to find a cosy breakfast spot on my last day in Melbourne, and I find exactly that at The Grain Store.
The coffee was excellent. Just the thing to enjoy sipping as I read the Saturday paper (one of my favourite things to do). And breakfast… well, can I just day the menu looked so good I spent a long time trying to decide and got some recommendations from the waitress. I eventually ordered the white mushrooms (which also happened to be the waitresses favorite, so who was I to argue?). Let me just say — OMG. I was in heaven after the first bite and it just got better. The only disappointing thing was that I couldn’t finish it all!
A thoroughly enjoyable breakfast. I’d come back to try they cakes and treats if I had some more time in Melbourne.

Outstanding food, coffee, and vibe. I loved the chocolate pancakes and bacon (that rivaled the best US bacon)!

This is a great place for brunch. I suggest asking about the various options with the folks who work here — they seem more than happy to help and recommend. I had more green than I can handle (though I am a vegetarian), but, I think it’s my own fault. Nonetheless, carrot falafel was tasty! It seems like a very busy place; the service is swift. I don’t think it’s a place you go if you wanna just take your own sweet time to chit chat while you eat. A tad bit expensive too.

Awesome! The breakfasts are outstanding. So many unique and beautiful takes on different breakfasts meals. We had the bacon steak with croquet and egg and wild mushroom poached eggs. Both were delicious! Can’t wait to go back and coffee was great too.

Great brunch. Bacon steak best ever. Fried Haloumi To die for. Coffee awesome and great service. I get why this place is 4 stars. Maybe it should be 5. Ema the waitress was friendly, cute and chatty. It’s clear the menu is top notch for brunch. Will come again now we know it’s here.

We came on 11:00 AM on a Saturday and still needed to wait 40 minutes for a table and she said 10 minutes. Regardless of the long wait time, we decided to stay and chatted until our table was ready. Once we sat down the service was prompt as you would expect in a busy brunch place.
We ordered:
Wild Mushroom and Poached Egg
Portobello Mushroom and Gruyère Potato Rosti
Sweet Corn Fritter and Avocado
Everything is really good. I am genuinely surprised because this place has the feel of a souless restaurant who’s only concern is to seat you, and get you out the door. There is some of that because it is so busy, but next time I will come much earlier like 9:00 AM so I don’t feel so rushed. By the time we left around 12:45 PM there was a huge line. If you are thinking about coming during busy hours make sure you have at least an hour or more to kill while you wait and wait and wait…

Rude staff member at front of house. When we arrived, she told us to sit & wait on the bench at the front. After a little while, she then seated another 2 who had just walked in, ahead of us. When we asked her about this she said she never saw us. We reminded her that just moments ago, she had greeted and seated us. Instead of acknowledging her mistake, she palmed us off to another waiter with a contemptuous look.

Oh my god. Oh my goddddd. So damn good.
If food could talk and it could sing out it’s favourite place to be served, it would be The Grain Store.
We arrived without a booking and the place was jam packed. The server promised us a 15 min wait and guess what? It was precisely that, even though the queue was getting longer by the minute. It was staggering to see how many people were rocking up at this joint. If it’s this popular, surely it must be good, right?
Right!
We got the ricotta hotcakes and the portobello mushrooms. Sooooo goood. The hotcakes were to die for, the flavours were spot on. The the mushrooms just melted in your mouth from all the goodness. I could’ve had seconds. When the plates landed I thought the portion was too small but it was just perfect. The juices were also really refreshing and fresh.
The prices were a bit higher than your standard brunch place however, but I feel that this is justified. I will definitely make my return.

Went here for lunch today and ordered the children w/​mushroom croquettes. When my meal arrived it the waitress said «chicken» and I said «croquettes?», and she confirmed and set down something different at my plate.
It turned out to be Coq au vin, and I wasn’t in the mood. Didn’t want to cause a scene or embarrass the waitress who delivered the food and clearly didn’t know what croquettes were, so I remained silent and after a bite or two set it aside.
Won’t be returning here for lunch!

Loved this place! Was in Melbourne for two days, staying at the Intercontinental on Collins St, and went here both mornings! We liked it so much we returned the next day. The coffee was really good and the menu choices were just that little bit different, not your stock standard e. g Ricotta and Pink Lady Buckwheat pancakes (Delish!) with Nutella and Mandarin Gel (Oooo, so good). Also had the smashed greens with poached eggs and polenta cakes — yummo! With their filament bulbs and earthy tones, their décor was very ‘now’. Service was friendly and fairly quick.
Tip: for diners in wheelchairs, go to the second entrance so you’re not negotiating your way between tables.

After having a conversation with the guy sitting next to us about how delicious his meal looked, his chair broke, causing him to fall to the ground. Was this a sign that everything wasn’t what it seemed, here at the Grain Store? Not entirely, but some parts of our experience were negative, like the service we received — asking for something from the woman who was meant to be serving us was mission impossible: we were laughed at for making simple and reasonable requests.
Aside from this we had quite a positive experience. Each of our dishes was presented fantastically, particularly mine, which was the falafel salad. Although the falafel itself wasn’t great (it was too soft for my liking and had little flavour), the rest of the flavours and textures made the meal enjoyable. The serving portion for each of our meals was very generous as well.
All in all, I’d say four stars is fitting.

One of the best places in the CBD to enjoy a splendid brunch.
Serving excellent fair and did you know that they bake cookies on site?
We were with a group of 4 adults a 3 year old and a baby in a pram and were accommodated with pleasure.
Food was spot on and served within a timely manner.
If you’re in Melbourne’s CBD this is the place to go.

I tried this breakfast spot on Sunday morning, it sits at one end of Flinders Lane and from the outside looked pretty quiet, the inside was another story, The place was packed with customers, this included quite a significant line in the foyer of the apartments it is joined to.
We ended up joining the line in order to try this place out, a positive was they allow you to order a coffee while you wait and then deliver it to you in the line.
The menu was excellent, there are quite a number of unique breakfast options on the menu and it is a difficult decision trying to chose, on Sunday I opted for the Chilli and Fennel Sausage and Fried Onion Rings — this came with poached eggs, pearl lentils, pear chutney and leek fondue, as did my friend. I had spotted a girl on the table next to us with this and it looked fantastic.
The food was fresh and the ingredients in this dish were so well matched. It was interesting that the dish had lentils in it which obviously goes with this café’s name, pretty cool that they have tried to incorporate grains into most the menu items.
The fit out of The Grain Store was lovely it’s a fresh, clean, well spaced café and given how busy it was I still felt comfortable and not overpowered by noise.
Staff were very attentive and even though they were super-​busy they were more then happy to explain the menu items, answer our questions and make recommendations.
Whilst on the odd occasion I am happy to wait for a meal, if I lived in Melbourne I probably would not spend 30 minutes waiting in a line for breakfast given their are so many options.

Can’t fault this place, perfect menu, excellent service, yummy coffee, lots of GF /​vego options, and beautiful selection of pastries.
I had poached eggs with a potato and Gruyère rosti, & mushrooms. Could have used a side, maybe bread, but it was incredible.
There was about 12 options on the brunch menu and they all looked incredible, can’t wait to go back!

I want to love Grain Store, but to be honest I felt that the service there was only lukewarm at best and I never felt truly welcomed there.
On this occasion I had a sweet treat: zucchini and lime cake with passionfruit cream
Zucchini? In a cake? You ask. Yup, it’s obviously healthy (not! Lol). My dining partner refuses to try it but it wasn’t too bad. You can hardly taste the zucchini and the passionfruit cream was yumgasmic. I felt that the cake itself though was slightly on the dry side.
I am not a huge coffee drinker so I ordered a relatively healthy decision and have juice. The house made spirulina, pineapple, pear & mint juice tasted strongly of pineapple and that’s pretty much about it. I ordered spirulina expecting something murky green and overly pond scummy tasting– I know I am weird but I expect it and embrace it and it makes me feel healthy… So this weak a$$ version did absolutely nothing for me :(

So, we made a work booking for 7 people over a week ago and were all very excited to try this place. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the décor which is beautiful. We were then promptly told that in spite of our booking we would need to be out at 10:30 — an hour and a half.
Naturally with a group of 7 not everyone shows up on time, so this added a bit of pressure to what was meant to be a relaxing team building morning.
My food (the potato and cauliflower omlette) was great, but a few of the people at my table were really disappointed with the size of their meals in comparison.
We decided we’d like some sweets after our breakfast (in part because of the people who were still hungry) and began ordering — only to be told that some options were going to take too long to cook and push us over the time limit– so we’d have to pick something else.
I’ve been to plenty of places where they tell you that if you book a table you’ll only have a certain amount of time at it — but they tell you before you book. I’ve not been to any place — pre– booked or not — where they hurry you along like this.
It really damped our experience of what seems like a nice place.
The service overall was just really disappointing.

Rarely would I give 5 stars. But grain store is one of my favourite cafes within the CBD. Why because it is a café that you would expected to find in suburbs of Collingwood, Hawthorn, Brunswick etc. Food is fantastic — the hazelnut hollandaise used in the mushroom, poached eggs and rosti dish is legendary. Furthermore it is a great place to meet for business meetings as they have proper sized tables for four so you can get the laptop out and paper deck if need be. Check it out!

Sitting unassumingly at the quiet end of Flinders Lane, The Grain Store offers a modern insight into traditional European cooking.
It strives on the source of its ingredients, enlisting local CERES Fair Food to procure seasonal, organic produce. The architecture of timber flooring and tables, marble benches, exposed ceiling and a sliding barn door to separate the dinner dining area introduces a sleek, modern and inviting ambience.
The lunch food menu is an eclectic mix of breakfast and lunch with creative dishes. Its focus is on combinations less travelled with the use of ingredients such as black pudding, goji berries and goats curd. Complimented with a selection of espresso and filter coffee from Sensory Lab and a dinner menu, The Grain Store offers the complete package, adding to the growing trend of cafes venturing into all-​day service.
On this visit, I ordered the Spiced Spear Creek Dorper lamb loin with skordalia, asparagus, beans, goats yoghurt and pistachio gremolata, topped with sweet potato crisps. This tantalising flavour combination harnesses the light tang of the goats yoghurts and compliments it with the creamy skordalia, completing the tender, juicy cuts of lamb loin. The coffee also complimented the flavours well.
This dish, although quite filling and approaching dinner portion size, still left room for something sweet. I opted for the wildly acclaimed freshly baked to order chocolate chip cookies. There is a wait time of roughly ten minutes to allow for baking but it is perfectly reasonable after experiencing the result. Four hot, not too hard but not too soft, cookies with the chocolate chips still in a melted, almost thick syrupy, state. Simply divine. A glass of milk on the side to wash the cookies down with forms the perfect compliment.
Although maybe counteracted by the quality, there is a small critique needed of the pricing. The lamb loin dish was $ 29 which is on the high side of lunch time pricing at a café. The freshly baked cookies were a very reasonable $ 10.
A return visit for dinner service is definitely necessary at this exciting inner city gem.