The whole ‘third wave of coffee’ thing irritates me. To begin with, the term ‘third wave of coffee’ is pretty pretentious, but what’s worse is that a lot of the places don’t actually deliver the goods. I’ve tried places like Brother Baba Budan and Seven Seeds a number of times, and I’m yet to have an above average coffee.
There is an exception though, and it’s Proud Mary (172 Oxford St, Collingwood). I’ve been here quite a few times, and coffees have ranged from good to amazing. And that’s just the espresso-based coffees, I’m yet to try the Clover or Syphon.
I haven’t eaten there much, but the food I’ve had was worthy of the coffee. Recently I tried the scrambled eggs on damper with onion jam, bacon, roasted tomatoes and pork & fennel sausages. The highlights were the tomatoes, which were nice and sweet, and the crisp bacon. Unfortunately the onion jam was as quite sweet – too much so, in my opinion. Fennel wasn’t overly obvious in the sausages, but they were still pretty good.
There’s always a danger with a place as popular as this that the staff will have a too cool for school attitude, but thankfully this is not the case here. They’re friendly, knowledgable and helpful.