It’s the flexibility of things that we enjoy. With cafés, it’s the freedom to walk in with a laptop, a pram or just ourselves and order from a menu of good seasonal produce that’s been treated well, without fuss.
As retail moves more and more online, we look for something special that makes us want to shop like we used to. Enter Pod at Post Industrial Design (Pid) in West Footscray.
The Pod café opened in November and is at the front of the large furniture shop that is Post Industrial Design on Barkly Street. Both the businesses, under the one roof, are a collaboration of couples Mary Long and Jos Van Hulsen – who are behind Pid – and chef Jess Haire and his wife, front-of-house manager Fi Marment, who own and operate Pod.
Long and Van Hulsen have had Pid for three years. The four friends decided to open a café space that offers, in Marment’s words, “a healthy and delicious menu – we want to feed people, not fatten them”.
The small dining space is furnished with tables made by Van Hulsen, an industrial designer, from recycled timber and restored pieces. There is a communal table, a window bench and smaller tables around the room that can be booked for groups of four or more.
Long has stocked pretty, urban homewares, handbags, furniture and knick-knacks in Pid’s showroom, and Haire’s menu complements the aesthetic and sustainable ethos of the two businesses, using seasonal produce in simple ways.
From the bread (courtesy of Sourdough Kitchen in Seddon) to the kaiserfleisch – thick-cut German-style bacon – the breakfast menu covers a range of tastes and budgets. A dish of vanilla rice pudding strikes the right sweet note, without being overly so. Fat chunks of poached plum sit on top, the juice sliding down the rice grains.
The Pod breakfast salad is a peppy dish. The freshness of the sliced spinach and silverbeet works with sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and the optional addition of goat’s cheese and pesto is worth the extra $3. This is a dish that awakens the palate with its bitter green mix and soft poached egg that oozes over the greens.
Lunch includes dishes that balance flavour with healthy ingredients; a cauliflower, quinoa and chickpea salad is lightened with soft herbs and feta, and there’s some play with Japanese flavours, perhaps miso soup with pumpkin and spring onion or a plate of braised chicken onigiri with iceberg and wakame salad.
The staff maintain the fluid mood, too; they happily accommodate a child’s call for extra toast and sate tired adults with well-made coffee from Niccolo. Pod Café is a welcome addition to the room that is Post Industrial Design and to the area – for both its quality food and its flexibility.
Pod at Post Industrial Design
638 Barkly Street, West Footscray
Food | Contemporary café menu
Vibe | Casual
Phone | 9362 7703
Open | Tuesday to Friday 7am-4pm; weekends 8am-4pm
» postindustrialdesign.com.au/Content/pod-cafe-westfootscray/
