Manly Eats

When I arrived home from Japan in March I discovered there had been a few changes in Manly town! Several new cafes and food related shops had sprung up in my absence, adding to the rejuvenation of the area which was given a good rev up a couple of years ago with the arrival of Hugos and  more recently with Manly Pavillion. 

Historically the food in the village has been pretty crap.  OK, OK that is a generalisation... (but a fairly apt one).  There have been a couple of beauties along the way of course but sadly several of them have not lasted the distance. We are talking about a fickle beachside town - stupid busy in Summer and almost dead in Winter. Thankfully that appears to be slowly changing with what looks to be a steady flow of people traffic this cool season.  And with good reason.

Mr Zumbo has moved in and a couple of relatively newish local joints such as Jah bar, The pantry, Barefoot coffee traders, The Troubadour, Miss Marleys, Manly Wine bar and the revamped Bower cafe have been serving up decent coffee and/ or pretty good food and cocktails of late. Thank the lord!

But Organicus seems to have become my regular for brekkie... the atmosphere is fairly laid back,  the food and coffee are pretty damn fine and everything is, as the name would suggest, organic and made on the premises with care. They have a great display of excellent looking salads and other luscious take away items -  muffins, cakes, bread etc so if you are looking for something quick on your lunchbreak or a lovely picnic in the park it is worth dropping in. 

Croque Madame.... mmmmm please

 Great choice for the kidlets too...

I also had a delicious breakfast at The Pantry recently. The view is stupendous, right on the beachfront...  and if the morning offerings are anything to go by the midday meal looks very promising indeed. Some good cookin' going on in that small kitchen...  (even the position above the public toilets won't put me off returning soon). More on this spot later...

The recently opened Hemingway's is worth a look. I also had breakfast there this week ( I seem to be doing little else but eating eggs at the moment ...) and scoffed a fairly decent bacon and egg roll - although the bread was a little too chewy for my liking but early days (week 1 in fact!). The breakfast menu is small and the bowl of coco pops didn't really inspire me -  but I suspect it is lunch, dinner and later in the evening that will be more of a focus. It is a quirky menu and if they pull it off it could be a lot of fun. Its following the trail of that whole dude food movement and I look forward to seeing how it goes...

If you are visiting from out of the area and looking for a quick coffee -  Bacino Bar and Barefoot are the go ! And I hear a rumour the Barefoot folk are opening up in the space next to Adriano's joint. So yay - one more fab spot to enjoy a cup- o-Joe and a sneaky macaron... I have yet to get a seat at Infinity Sourdough Bakery - actually it is generally so busy you can barely get a foot in the door - but I hear they have good coffee too.  Let you know when I find out...

I'll keep adding to this post as I stumble across the new places that keep cropping up.  (And perhaps include a few older ones too if they are lifting their game with the influx of competition...)

I don't know how this came to be but I love this thongy installation - it is near the council carpark behind the library - check it out while it lasts.