Mammoth, Armadale – The Baroness of Melbourne
http://www.thebaronessofmelbourne.com/blog//mammoth-armadale
Amazing food worth driving across town for is what you’ll find at this deservedly popular Armadale café. Set on the corner of Malvern Rd and Beatty Ave, Mammoth makes up for it’s compact size with bold, punchy flavors. Their tag line of “eat mammoth” is well and truly justified.
The first thing that hit me when I walked into Mammoth was fear. Fear that we had driven all the way here and that we would not get a table and I would die of starvation on the footpath, right here in leafy, affluent Armadale. Thank goodness then that at that very moment a table stood up, scraped their chairs across the tiles and made for the door. The Baron and I pounced on the table with the help of our waitress and I breathed a sigh of hungry relief.
I had studied the menu before I arrived and knew what we were having for dessert right away, the famed Golden Gaytime panna cotta. I truly am a girl that decides on dessert first and makes her way back through the menu from there. To counterbalance my dessert choice I made a healthy commitment for lunch with the rainbow salad of fermented vegetables, puffed rice, almonds, buffalo curd, walnut and apple dressing. The virtuousness that I felt eating this salad was supreme and paved the way beautifully for the lusciousness of what was to follow. I should say that the salad was a feast for the eyes, taste buds and soul. As well as being gluten free and potentially vegan, if you so request.
The Baron went for the manliest dish of the menu, ribs. But here at Mammoth even ribs look pretty and refined. The charred Szechuan spiced, spare ribs were accompanied by a crisp, fresh cucumber and nashi salad with a side of sublime apple cider jelly; the perfect foil to those rich ribs. Suffice to say The Baron was very happy with this dish.
The second thing that hit me when we entered Mammoth was the noise, this is a bustling café with mums and dads packing bubs in high chairs dropping crumbs on the floor combined with the Armadale set catching up for brunch in their effortlessly, chic ensembles. My tip for the sound sensitive is to take a seat outside or as close to the door as possible where the breeze blows gently though the bright, airy white washed room and helps carry out some of the chatter.
So to the main event, dessert – The Golden Gaytime panna cotta certainly lived up to the Instagram love it has been receiving. As soon as it was placed on our table in all its gold leaf glory I knew we were in for something special. Dressed in house made honeycomb, a smooth, silky chocolate disc and sprinkled with chocolate popping candy this was a dessert lover’s sight to behold. The panna cotta was the perfect consistency, creamy, rich and delicate all at once. The combination of flavours was a very upmarket version of the childhood favourite that was the Golden Gaytime, the technical term for Mammoth’s interpretation – bloody delicious.
The menu at Mammoth is one of the best brunch menus in Melbourne – creative, inventive, original and most importantly superbly executed in terms of visuals and most importantly taste. There are so many things I want to try from the menu including the cherry lamington puffed pancake, the spanner crab egg crepe, the backyard fried haloumi with homemade HP sauce and the grilled lychee and passionfruit chia pudding. So get in your car, summon an Uber, jump on your bike, run, walk or crawl down to Armadale and Eat Mammoth.
mammoth – 736 malvern rd, armadale
Open 7 days