When you don’t eat breakfast out very often, venues need to have something special to lure you in. Mossy on Gardens Cafè derives that it-factor from its location inside the Eurobodalla Regional Botanic Garden. From the outside, the vernacular Australian architecture is geared toward coping with the climate, with solar panels, high ceilings and sloped rooflines. Inside it’s an enter-through-the-gift-shop affair, with the expansive, verandah-ringed cafe sitting at one end of the structure.
The cafe is an offshoot of Mossy on Pacific, named for its location in nearby Mossy Point. All three of this group’s venues use coffee by Guerrilla Roasters, which drinks well across a cappuccino ($4.50) and a strong flat white ($5.10). The succinct menu encourages you to build your own breakfast from a base of Bega Valley eggs on Honorbread toast ($13.50). Jason’s free-range bacon ($6.50), wilted spinach ($4) and a sauce bowl of blistered cherry tomatoes ($4) bursting with flavour were all worthy building blocks. Though certainly plentiful, the scrambled eggs were a bit light on flavour (a shadow on our normal Mulloon Creek Farm eggs) but it was nothing chilli sauce and chilli flakes couldn’t fix. Watching the birdlife—like purple swamphens pulling up reeds and feeding on their soft stems and a very friendly Australian magpie—was the best part of this peaceful breakfast. My only gripe was the plastic plants on the tables: when you’re in a botanic garden that grows and sells native plants, I would have preferred to see one of those sitting on each table.
