T'S dark, it's intimate, it's jazzy and buzzy; in fact, it's so cool we hardly believe we are to the middle of Ballarat. The owners of this surprise package have put it together with great passion - from the long and well balanced wine list to the wall of excellent jazz CDs (it doubles as a music store) and the city-slick waiting staff. L'espresso is open every day for breakfast and lunch, offering high-quality cafe-style dishes (including focaccia, bruschetta and pasta), but puts on a duskier mood on Friday and Saturdav nights, when it turns into a bistro offering modern Mediterranean food. On those nights, you might find a rocket, leek and artichoke tart on polenta crust, or 'Guernica-style' baked baby snapper with spinach, roasted red peppers and zucchini, or a fantastic combination of char-grilled kangaroo fillet on sweet potato roesti with house-made red pepper chutney.
After dinner we suggest skipping dessert in favor of one of the well-sourced italian cheeses - perhaps gorgonzola piccante or a Fine piece of taleggio. While some dishes lack a little sophistication, without fail the produce is fresh, and the flavors full. And besides, the food is not the only reason people visit: peer into the kitchen and you'll spot jazz books on the shelves next to the cookbooks. 
14/20
RECOMMENDED Jennie Beacham, Premier Steve Bracks, Steve Moneghetti

L'espresso Love

Review by Claude Forell - The Age Epicure: Tuesday August 22nd 2000

Night and day, you are the one ... If L'espresso had a theme tune, this could be it. True, owner Greg Wood is more into modern jazz and the blues than Cole Porter, but for his loyal clientele, this is the place for breakfast, lunch and end-of-the week dinner, or glorious coffee and cake any time of day.

The Ballarat-born zoology graduate and former Demon footballer - that's him at the espresso machine behind the bar brought the aura and buzz of the Carlton cafe scene to main-street Ballarat 14 years ago and began a trend of which he is still the local front-runner.

Wood's original idea when he returned from La Trobe University in 1976 was to open a specialist record shop, and one dark-panelled wail is still lined with jazz, blues and rock CDs. But as that was not enough to sustain a livelihood, he added Vittoria coffee, T2 tea, snacks and shelves of top-grade regional Italian produce, from extra-virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars to famous name pasta, arborio rice, aperitifs and confectionery. More recently, the relatively simple cafe fare has been augmented by more ambitious restaurant dishes on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Night and day are quite different at L'Espresso. By day, it's a bustling grazing and browsing scene, spilling out to the sunny-side-of-the-street pavement tables in fine weather. At night the timber tables, now set with white napery and candle lamps, are bathed in soft pools of focused light that appears to erase the background. The elegant dinner menus, changing monthly, are printed on gold paper framed on large black cards.

For breakfast, we can recommend the muesli with Meredith sheep's yoghurt and poached fruit, and the homemade baked beans with polenta, parmigiano and spiced sausage. For lunch, wed go for the Ferron
carnaroli risotto with radicchio, bacon and rosemary or John Harbor's local pork sausages with braised apple and fennel, potato mash an mixed spice chutney.

But we skipped lunch after a late breakfast in the winter sunshine for the romantic glow of an early dinner. For her it was the Swiss chard and roasted pearl barley soup ($9.50), distinguished by a rosemary pistou and ears of grilled ciabatta, before an imaginative, main sized antipasto platter of "vegetarian delights" ($14.50) that included crumbed fennel, smoked red and yellow capsicum, aubergine and zucchini salad, mushroom in puff pastry, goat's cheese bruschetta and other tidbits.

My very pleasing choices were the boudin blanc ($12.50), a delicate sausage of chicken mousse, sweetbreads and morel mushrooms sliced over fettuccine tossed in fine herbs, followed by glazed lamb shanks, delectably tender and redolent of lemon and prunes, on buttered cous cous with perfumed pumpkin ($20.50). From a well balanced wine list we picked a local wine, a Dulcinea pinot noir for $28.

L'espresso is noted for its house made ice creams and fruit sorbets, and its baked-on-the-premises cakes and tarts. We shared the caffe latte zuppa inglese ($7.50), a stylish Italian trifle of coffee soaked biscotti and mascarpone cream, sprinkled with coffee granita, served in a latte glass.

Best out of town - December 2000 Sunday Life
More Brunswick Street than Ballarat with its banquette and bistro-style set-up, yet, L'espresso is a groovy and thoroughly pleasant cafe by day and a restaurant two nights a week. Lunch can be focaccia, pasta or something more substantial, such as grilled lamb marinated in rosemary and lavender. Dinner will include a ripper risotto, maybe duck and, usually, a decent steak. The coffee is great all day. 
Open: daily, 7.30am-6pm; Fri-Sat from 6.30pm. Prices: entrees about $11.50; mains about $21.

Local Author & L'espresso regular - Peter Temple describes L'espresso Cafe/Restaurant 
]It consists of two narrow spaces holding a dozen tables, a fought over banquette, and a wall of jazz and blues CDs that lures music lovers from afar. The cafe's day begins early with the talented chef's baking delectable cakes. Then the office workers start to arrive and the smell of serious coffee and benchmark breakfasts wafts into the street. Many are back at lunchtime, when the blackboard menu's choices are a torment.

Night falls and l.'espresso turns into the kind of neighbourhood restaurant for which people change neighbourhood: superb food, cheering buzz of talk and laughter, good linen, good glasses, a thoughtful winelist. At all times, devotion to the quality of ingredients is religious. Service is with attitude, cheerful and professional attitude. Watching over all of this are Candy Bryce and Greg Wood they have run their cafe for 14 years and it gets better every year.

Coffee
"Pelligrinis of Ballarat": The Age Cheap Eats

"You'd be happy to find a cafe like this, even in the big smoke": Angus Holland, Sunday Age

"It's a dose of espresso strength city style in this regional centre" The Age Good Food Guide 2000

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