The European
161 Spring Street
Melbourne Vic 3000

A day out with the ladies to the theatre isn’t complete without a great meal and a great meal was definitely had at the European.

We were lucky enough to score tickets to a Saturday matinee session of Dirty Dancing at the beautiful Princess Theatre and decided to head in a bit earlier to enjoy a pre show lunch. For anyone who has attended shows at the Princess, you’ll know that it can be really chaotic around the theatre in the hour leading up to the show, making it almost impossible to get a table at any of the restaurants around it. To our luck, at first try we scored a table at the warm and welcoming European. I don’t know if it’s the Art Deco inspired styling or the timber detailing. but you really can’t help but feel at home here.

The menu as you’d expect is full of great lunch/brunch option, so much so that it took us about 10-15 minutes to decide what to eat. In the end we decided on the toasted nut and seed bread (served with a poached egg and avocado), the ricotta fritters (with zucchini, rocket and basil) and the fig and bresaola bruschetta.

I had the nut and seed bread, which was really full of nuts and seeds. Stating the obvious? Yep, but I don’t know any other way to describe it. Often when you order this kind of dish, the nuts are few and far between even though they’re supposed to be the star. This definitely wasn’t the case here, I’m talking lots of nuttiness and it was great. Add to that some avocado and a couple of poached egg and you have the prefect brunch dish.

One of the other girls had the ricotta fritters and really seemed to enjoy them. The others had the bruschetta and said they were amazing. The prefect balance of sweet in the fig and salt in the bresaola, they were both full of praise for this dish.

So if you’re on the hunt for a great pre show meal, go no further than the European.