Sunday brunch at Pancakes at Carillon
Last Sunday morning, we both woke up hungry. A flick through the Entertainment Book proved inspiring – Pancakes at Carillon sounded appealing to us both. I haven’t been there since I was sixteen years old, when I had breakfast there with a group of my school friends, and I remember really enjoying it. And I’m always up for pancakes. I just wish more places made pancakes, and I mean interesting pancakes, with savoury as well as sweet accompaniments.
I love restaurants that have breakfast menus, but what I love even more are restaurants that have breakfast menus AND also offer their regular menu at breakfast time, so you have the choice of everything. Jac and I love going out for breakfast, but we don’t always feel like the standard breakfast fare of bacon and eggs and toast etc. Don’t get me wrong, as we sat there studying the menu and deciding what to order, the breakfast plates we saw being delivered to the tables around us were piled generously high and looked absolutely mouth-watering – fried eggs with bright orange yolks, glistening brown sausages, golden hash browns that looked fresh, hot and crispy, balls of whipped butter sitting on fluffy pancakes, and of course bacon, lots and lots and lots of bacon – but we were in the mood for something else. We went for savoury crepes instead. You can order the savoury crepes in entree size (one crepe, with salad) or main size (two crepes with salad). We ordered main sizes while fully intending to have a round of sweet pancakes afterwards for dessert. We really were hungry!
Jac chose the Tabriz (AU$14.90 entree, $18.90 main). The two French crepes were filled with beef mince that had been cooked in red wine, herbs and spices, with onion, mushrooms, tomatoes and capsicum, served a homemade tomato sauce.
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I chose the Chicken Mexicana (AU$15.90 entree, $19.90 main). Funnily enough, I remember all the way back to that previous visit when I was sixteen, I’d ordered crepes with Mexican filling too. But back then it may have been the non-chicken Mexicana, with beef chilli mix – that detail I don’t remember. My two crepes were filled a surprisingly spicy Mexican-style chicken chilli and bean mix, topped with tomato sauce, chopped spring onions, grated cheese and a generous dollop of sour cream. Fantastic. As I ate, the heat from within the crepes melted most of the cheese to a lovely gooeyness. The sour cream was definitely needed to cut down the richness and cool down the spiciness of the chicken and bean filling. The salad was also a welcome inclusion and balanced an otherwise very rich dish. It was a good idea ordering the main sized serves – it meant we each had plenty to eat, and plenty to share. :)
As our plates were cleared away, we asked for the menu again so that we could order dessert. Jac decided to order a cappucino as well. She said her coffee was nice and creamy and just what she felt like after that all the rich crepe(s).
I had to move fast to take the dessert photos as soon as our plates arrived, as the ice cream and fresh cream were rapidly melting on their warm crepe and pancake beds! I could see the panic in Jac’s eyes as her scoop of ice cream melted just a little more and slid across the crepe as I took my last photo! Don’t worry, she pretty much got to plunge in the second after I took the photo below.
Jac’s dessert choice was Raspberry Cheese ‘n’ Cream (AU$13.90) – two French crepes filled with a mixture of cream cheese, sultanas and vanilla, topped with fresh cream and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, served in a pool of sweet raspberry puree. I’m not a big cream cheese or raspberry-anything fan, but even I had to admit the combination was delicious. The cream cheese mixture was rich and sweet and utterly luscious. There weren’t many sultanas in the cream cheese, but enough to add to the pleasure of the dish; they were sweet and juicy and added an interesting texture contrast to the smooth cream cheese.
I love pancakes with banana, and just as I did when we went to Pancakes on The Rocks on our Christmas holidays, I ordered a dish of pancakes with banana called Bananarama (AU$12.90) – this Bananarama consisted of two fluffy buttermilk pancakes and two sweet lightly caramelised grilled sliced bananas, topped with fresh cream and a scoop of chocolate ice cream, all dusted with cinnamon. The pancakes were buttery rather than sugary, which was very good, as almost everything else on the plate was so very sweet. The buttery flavour of the pancakes went perfectly with the cream, ice cream and oodles of sticky maple syrup – oh yes, one detail I particularly love about Pancakes at Carillon is that on every table there is a big bottle of maple syrup with a pouring nozzle, so you don’t have to ask for maple syrup; you can simply drown your pancakes with lashings of syrup your heart’s/sweet tooth’s content. There was no way I would left Pancakes at Carillon without consuming maple syrup! I poured myself a dark golden pool’s worth and dipped each mouthful of pancake and banana into it before eating. My only complaint was that the banana could’ve been more caramelised, but other than that, this was fan-bloody-tastic.
With a pineapple juice for Jac, an orange juice for me, and the 25% discount from the Entertainment Book, the total we paid was AU$58.30 ($19.40 discount). A very filling meal, not something we plan to do often! We definitely didn’t need lunch that day, and we didn’t eat again that day until it was well and truly dinner time that evening. After hauling our full bellies out of the restaurant, we walked around town and had a look in the shops for a little while. A session of unashamedly heroic eating most certainly needs to be followed by walking or some form of exercise to help the food digest, if not placate the guilt that sadly follows. :)
Pancakes at Carillon is located at Level 1, Carillon City (Hay Street Mall end) in Perth.
Most of the seating is booth-style, which I really like. Hopefully it won’t take me another 17 years to return for my next session of pancake gluttony.