Il Fornaio - St Kilda

The coffee at Il Fornaio isn't too bad and the croissants and pastries are delicious, definitely recommend if you are after a quick bite to eat

In case you didn't know - I didn't - Il Fornaio means "baker" in Italian, which is why I said forget the croissants, although probably they are excellent, too. I went for the Eggs Benedict with salmon and it was delicious. Plenty of salmon, perfect eggs. And ... it was SO pretty! One of my companions had a salad with nutty, healthy things and that looked divine, too, and we were impressed with the coffee. Service was casual, but friendly. We were a party of six so we booked but the place was not overcrowded for a Saturday morning. It does get a little noisy due to the cement floors, and I'd recommend sitting outside if the weather permits it.

Good value hole-in-the-wall cafe with a small al fresco area. Very friendly back packer type staff. Reasonably priced, good value tasty food. Quite interesting interior. There's lots around here and you can do far worse than il Fornaio.

We used to come here for breakfast a lot but after a few bad experiences, we stopped. However, I started regularly coming to Il Fornaio for a morning coffee after the gym and a take away smoothie for breakfast. The coffee and 'I have a pun' smoothies are delicious and have been consistently good. Thinking it might be time to give them another go for a sit down breakfast, I came here with my husband over the weekend and it reminded us why we stopped coming. We ordered two coffees; a skinny cappuccino and just a regular cappuccino. They came back to the table check what the drink order was (forgotten by time they walked away again) three times. Even then, two coffees were just put down in front of us without anything said about which was regular milk and which was skim. Not a big deal. I ordered a smoothie and my husband ordered simple scrambled eggs on toast. They again came back to the table after taking the order to ask what my husband ordered again. After 25 minutes or so they come out with poached eggs on toast. When told we ordered scrambled it took another 15 minutes for it to come out. The toast was cold and inedible. It seems as though staff are either untrained or just uninterested. Would recommend for a good coffee, but not anything else. There are plenty of places close by where you'll get better value food and better service.

As luck would have it Il Fornaio was a very convenient location for us to meet a friend for lunch. I had forgotten how good this is for a very tasty casual lunch as it is on the other side of town from where we live.The ladies had wagyu burgers... side of fries and with great onion rings. I had pumpkin bread toasted and grilled halloumi and exotic trimmings... Had to actually choose but everyone was pleased and a fine coffee to finish.