Top Paddock

At Top Paddock the menu is centered on using the finest ingredients and sourcing local produce to use in their meals. You can see the love that has gone into the preparation and presentation of the dishes. The ingredients are treated with respect and everything on the plate compliments the dish. They’ve used recycled materials in their décor where they can. If you look closely in the photo above in the bottom left you can see the tops of the stools are made out of recycled parking signs. So I suggest you park your toosh onto one of these chairs and get eating.

My friend ordered the fresh QLD soft-shell mud crab roll with a fennel & dill salad & lime mayonnaise in a brioche bun. The crab was battered and had a nice crunch. The buttery brioche complimented the creamy crab and the zing from the lime in the mayo gave it a real freshness. It was delicious!

I could smell the delicious aromas when my meal arrived. I ordered the Top paddock, which was a big breakfast with style. It had chorizo, pickled onion, peppers, basil, bacon, Adelaide green tomatoes, poached eggs & relish on toast. It had a really great balance, the pickled onions were sweet, the bacon was the salty component, the peppers had crunch, the basil was fried and the eggs were perfectly poached and runny when you cut into them. The relish was rich and tomatoey and went with everything on the plate. Each element tasted delicious individually and when you mixed it together it was even better.

What caught my eye was the tomatoes. They were green. They looked like tomatoes, they tasted like tomatoes but they were green. Green eggs and ham I’ve heard of, but green tomatoes and bacon, I have not, I like them a lot, I would eat them here or there, I would eat them anywhere (just to clarify, I was trying to be Dr. Suess in that last sentence).

We ordered the blueberry and ricotta hotcake with berries, organic maple, seeds and double cream. It was amazing! It was light and fluffy and warm and melted in your mouth. The top of the hotcake was golden and crispy around the edges. Yum! Yum! Yum! Inside the hotcake there were little pops of blueberries and little pockets of ricotta. There was bits of the hotcake that had absorbed the maple mmm extra sweetness. There was a quenelle of double cream on top to eat with each bite and seeds and flowers scattered across the hotcake. It looked spectacular and tasted incredible. It was really delicious! At first we were really full after out savoury dishes and didn’t think we could eat much of the hotcake. After one bite of that hotcake I felt like I could eat 10 of them. My tastebuds took over and demanded that my stomach make room for this heavenly hotcake.

They had some interesting baked yummies at the counter. They had these mouth watering donuts which had earl grey brewed icing w freeze dried raspberry and mandarin.

They also had some hybrid desserts like the half cheesecake, half brownie, chocolate cheesecake brownies. And the eclarons which have the powers of an éclair and a macaron combined into one. What the yum? Definitely first time I’ve seen one of those. The eclarons were filled with passionfruit curd and chocolate ganache. I was way too full to eat that strange looking fella at the time but in hindsight I should have taken it home to eat later. Ah wells I’ll just have to go back again very soon.

I enjoyed the food it looked fantastic and each meal was cooked with love. It’s definitely a place you want to make your local. It’s got a great open atmosphere and good service. Weekends can get very busy though so you might have to wait a little for a table but it will definitely be worth the wait.

I heart Top Paddock!

Olives x

Top Paddock
Address: 658 Church Street, Richmond
Website: http://www.toppaddockcafe.com
Phone: 03 9429 4332
Trading Hours: Mon-Fri: 7am-4pm, Sat-Sun: 8am-4pm