Australia’s best breakfasts

Bird Cow Fish, NSW

Bird Cow Fish has a pretty solid brunch rep, but to get really up close and personal, hit their stand Saturday morning at Sydney’s Eveleigh Markets, where, in addition to their Crooked Madam, you’ll also find the Oh My Goshlette. It’s a three-egg omelette cooked to order before your eyes and filled with anything from cherry tomatoes to a mushroom sauté.

Greenhouse, WA

Eats and drinks that are good for both you and the environment? Vote Greenhouse. While the rooftop garden and salvaged metal fixtures poll strongly on eco-friendly style, the youthful kitchen’s spirit gives the whole operation substance. Breakfast is about nourishing meals for one that sees this CBD favourite at its earthy, freewheeling best.

Chianti Classico, SA

This award-winning restaurant in Adelaide’s centre is where business tyros take power breakfasts with robust dishes equal to the occasion. Chef Toby Gush of Chianti Classico makes a gutsy smoked ocean trout and potato cake topped with poached free-range eggs and lifted by the tang of fresh salsa verde.

Code Black Coffee, VIC

Based in Brunswick, Melbourne, Code Black Coffee wholesales, retails and roasts an impressive range of beans and offers original, interesting, ingredient-focused breakfasts and lunch (including great sandwiches).

Pearl Café, QLD

Hankering after those European bistros that dispense the love from breakfast to supper? Pearl is prettier, but you’ll find a similar esprit at work, plus better breakfasts – Parisians only dream of waking up to the likes of pulled pork, cabbage and caramelised onion toasties. Careful produce sourcing shows in nutty-tasting, saffron-hued pine mushrooms, sparked up with preserved lemon, tarragon and sorrel, and in a crisp-crumbed cotoletta paired with crunchy celeriac rémoulade.

Four Ate Five, NSW

We love Four Ate Five for their killer coffee, for stocking Adriano Zumbo pastries and for rocking a pulled-pork sandwich on their lunch menu. But for breakfast, our affections centre squarely on the fact that they make their own creamed corn, then pile it high with eggs and bacon. With organic sourdough toast for mopping, it’s a thing of beauty.

Small Victories, VIC

Small Victories, in Melbourne’s Carlton North, dishes up deftly cooked food that includes leek and cheddar croquettes at breakfast and dangerously addictive Korean barbecue beef sandwiches.

Pigeon Hole, TAS

Among Pigeon Hole‘s mouth-watering breakfasts is a recipe for eggs en cocotte not to be missed. Impeccable timing and a few tiny pickled Spanish onion slivers turn this dish of baked eggs with jamón serrano into something memorable. Then again, the raclette and onion panino and the house-made beans on house-made toast are pretty sensational, too.

Alpha, NSW

Alpha is just one of a raft of restaurants edging into a breakfast turf more typically held by cafés. The Sydney CBD Hellenic heroes do a fruit salad worth writing home about (watermelon, strawberry and pomegranate), but the killer app here is the baked eggs with eggplant, peppers and tomato. That and the opportunity to order rice pudding (in the form of rizogalo) for brekky. Boom!

Roma Bar, NT

Give your inner hippy a thrill with the Indian breakfast at Roma Bar in Darwin. The dhal – golden and aromatic with turmeric and laced with chilli slices and cumin seeds – is not bad on its own, but scoop it up with chunks of onion-flecked roti, top it with yoghurt and spike it with the tart house-made lemon pickle and you may just reach vegetarian breakfast nirvana.