Something new at Newtown

After a miserable Saturday, it really was uplifting to wake up to a perfect, clear blue sky! Amazing that on days like this, everything just promises to be wonderful..... oh yeah, of course it'll be wonderful - we're out to have coffee and sweets in Newtown!

First stop - Campos. The coffee scene in Australia is enjoying some sort of a renaissance - artisan roasters, demand for single origins, and various hand-brewed or drip coffee are commonplace now, it really is a coffee snob's heaven. I opted for a cold drip from Colombia to wash down my crispy, fluffy croissant. I always found Colombian coffee a little on the bitter side, while a cold drip meant it was less bitter and more floral/fruity.

Brewtown Newtown was our next stop - as with most of the funky insdustrial style cafes, it was abuzz. Which meant a short wait for a table. This gave us some time to admire the long cabinet of cronuts ... which is about as close to these sugar and fat blobs as I'd ever get. The 4 of us devoured a morish pumpkin bread (among other things) with ginger and honey butter, and lime mascarpone which was da bomb! I could just eat that on its own! Also enjoyed the ginger and honey butter. But that mascarpone - I'm stealing that ....

Drinks to wash down our food - a cup of batch brew that smells like cocoa and has a very fruity flavour without bitterness at all, so I did prefer this over the Campos cold drip. The flat white by another dessertee also received good remarks. Teas came in individual tea pots and eclectic tea cups and milk jugs - cute.

We did also have something else at Brewtown but as it's not sweet, we will not report it....

The new spot - Crumble Top - I think has only been there for 6 months or so - we were curious with just how many types of crumble desserts they could come up with. And will they beat our the delicious warm hugs of apple crumble made by our grannies/nans? Lets find out ...

Damn, now that you gave us a choice, we don't know what to do! You get a choice of base + crumble flavour + type of sauce + scoop of ice cream...  So do we choose a classic crumble (eg apple and cinnamon with classic crumble and a butter scoth sauce and vanilla ice cream), or experiment with new flavours and textures? So our gang ended up with four different crumbles and accessories - some more daring than others - and we compared notes.

The concensus was good crunchy caramelised and aromatic crumble; the conservative of Granny Smith with cinnamon crumble, lemon curd sauce and vanilla ice cream was a cheerful choice as it's a tried and true flavour; Strawberry and rhubarb was gorgeous (I frequently make jam with these two produces) while white choc and macadamia crumble worked nicely; toffee sauce seem a little lackluster maybe? The "Spice girl" option of pear and ginger + cinnamon crumble provided a blast of cinnamon flavour, rendered the orange nutmeg sauce somewhat bland while the cardamon ice cream was a hit (perfect level of cardamon'ness); I went against all tradition (expectedly) with a sticky date pudding topped with a peanut butter crumble - a light, moist pudding sans butterscotch sauce - and a deliciously tangy lemon curd ice cream. Again, sauce was somewhat lacklustre for me - orange and nutmeg was just not nutmeggy enough. Also - decent shot of espresso. You'd need that to survive Newtown.

Stomach full and now in hyperdrive mode after multiple coffees, we left Newtown happy and satisfied... Skip lunch and go straight for an afternoon nap maybe?

CS