Station St Trading Co.

166 Station St
Port Melbourne, VIC 3207
03 9646 6663
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The people behind (the incredibly edible) Coin Laundry Cafe in Armadale has sold off that business, and they’ve opened a new venture in my hood! When I first got wind of it, I was on the verge of doing cartwheels… celebrating Port Melbourne’s slowly burgeoning café landscape.

And I confess I did a bit of a naughty food blogger thing here. On their very first weekend of trading, before they’d even had the chance to get their footing, I strolled down here and planted my (metaphorical) blogger’s flag square at its doors!

On that Saturday, it was almost as if the entire clientele from Coin Laundry had moved suburbs and plonked their arses here. For a newly opened café at such a residential, secluded spot in Port Melbourne, the place was pumping!

Flat white $3.5 (by Allpress Coffee)
Calmasutra chai $4.0 | Vietnamese style iced coffee $5.0 

All that said, the wait ended up being only 20 mins. Once seated, Fakegf, her partner (aka FakeOtherGuy) and I got ourselves a variety of brunch beverages.

I tried to steer clear of Allpress coffee and chose Vietnamese-style iced coffee instead. Sadly, it tasted not that Vietnamese… I was looking for that roasty, full-bodied character you get with Vietnamese coffee, enrichened with lots of condensed milk. Here, it was thin, mildly sweet and I suspect the coffee essentially came from Allpress beans.

Smashed avocado, goats feta & vine ripened tomatoes on farmhouse toast $13.5

The food took awhile to arrive, but this being their first Saturday of trading, I think they were just having trouble coping with the unforeseen deluge of customers. And they were nice enough to apologise about the wait.

As usual, fakegf was pretty much starving by the time the food came. She ate into this dish with great efficiency once it arrived and declared that it was good!

Station Street Breakfast Stack $17.0
smashed avocado, spinach, bacon, mushrooms, served with poached eggs & beetroot relish 

But being the boys that we are, FakeOtherGuy and I simply could not go past the breakfast stack. It stands as the only dish in Melbourne where each and every component is precisely something that I’d absolutely go for in a classic breaky… and at a friendly price tag!

The bacon is served ala signature Coin Laundry-style… grilled crisped on skewers. At this point, I should just quote FakeOtherGuy, who crooned “the bacon here is unbelievable, probably the best I’ve ever eaten!”.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to clear all that bright and glittery pixie-dust from stage-centre and announce a culinary downer:

They were so frazzled from the chaos that Saturday that a poached egg or two were forgotten in our dishes. When they did arrive, the ones I received were overcooked. The staff were so busy that day that I decided not to send the eggs back, but I was pretty upset about it.

If I were to just publish the experience above as a blog post, it’d probably be a little unfair…

So like with my Common Galaxia post, I waited a few months and then made a revisit after the dust had settled. You may notice that the rustic door in the previous picture has now been replaced by a cleaner door with glass panels.

Amongst the other things I noticed, it seems the handsome waitstaff demographic that used to anoint Coin Laundry are now here, like happily transplanted flowers. Coin Laundry, on the other hand, now seems to favour pretty waitresses.

Ahh… the things I notice… :p

Latte $3.5

Aesthetic transgressions aside, I caught up with Lauren here, just before she was about to embark on a week-long trip to Singapore and Malaysia. She was so excited about it!!

It was also a Tuesday, a much more peaceful tempo was pulsing in the café and things were running a lot smoother than my first visit.

Trading co. burger, grain fed beef, honey aioli, home made BBQ sauce, pickled cucumber on a brioche bun served w twice cooked poor boys $18,0

While we chatted endlessly about what she could see and where she should eat in Singapore, Lauren treated herself to an enjoyably tall burger. The mysterious sounding twice-cooked ‘poor boys’ turned out to just be fried chips.

Roast pumpkin and goats cheese fritters, dill hung yoghurt & soft herb salad $16,0
(+ a poached egg)

I peeled my instincts away from the promise of bacon skewers and breakfast stacks, and opted for something a little more vegetarian. These fritters were soft, gently sweet and quite nicely charred on the outside. But I wasn’t in familiar territory food-wise, and found the overall dish just o-kay (probably because I secretly wanted bacon!).

But guess what? The egg was poached perfectly…! Yaaaaay!!

Station St Trading Co. is a good-looking little café in my hood that can be busy on weekends. I’m quite likely to return on weekdays… and chances are, I’ll be ordering that classic breakfast stack again and again!