Sit back and let the good people of Fairweather sort your Saturday brunch.

Even the most staunch advocate of Australian café culture must admit that when we, the generation who perfected brunch, sift through every available menu item and eventually settle on either the smashed avocado (with a poached egg, if it’s pay day) or a pancake stack, we’re not asking much of our favourite chefs.

These are highly trained individuals with a broad palate and an adventurous array of knowledge at their fingertips, and so often we do them the disservice of ordering a dish we could plate up at home (admittedly, with less attention given to presentation).

Fairweather, the Solomon Street café of great repute, plan to counteract the human tendency to fall into familiar habits, with Satd’y Brunch, a monthly brunch series taking the chef’s menu concept into the café arena.

Fairweather owner, Simon Heinrich. This image: Jessica Clark

“Just taking that idea, but translating it into more a more café-style of thing,” explains Simon Heinrich, owner of Fairweather.

“One of the main drives for doing this event was to try and give Bri [Mahoney, Fairweather’s head chef] a chance to do something a bit outside of regular breakfast and lunch service… to give Bri a chance to push the boat out a bit more, spread her wings with her cooking.”

The event will have a set menu, starting with a set milk pudding with rhubarb, black tea syrup, and candied pistachio, paired with a Kenyan filter coffee roasted by Monday’s; which will be followed by the main course, “a simmered eggplant dish with poached eggs served with some buttered sourdough [and] buttered pine nuts… fitting in with our general vibe, which has a bit of Middle Eastern influence to it,” Simon explains, paired with an espresso coffee, also roasted by Monday’s.

First course – set milk pudding feat. rhubarb, black tea syrup, and candied pistachios, matched with filter coffee roasted by Monday’s. This image: Johnny von Einem

While this menu will allow Bri to properly flex her kitchen utensils, the nature of the event will also allow for a different style of service than their weekday offering.

“It will almost be less pressured, in a way, because we already know what people will be eating, we already know what people are going to be drinking, all we need to do is invite people in, get them settled, start serving them food, and then we can start talking about stuff and share a little about what Bri and I are passionate about through that,” Simon says.

Fairweather’s head chef, Brianna Mahoney. This image: Johnny von Einem

Through the event, Simon hopes that Fairweather customers will leave with a better understanding of what the café, as a concept, is capable of.

“I think that most people see café food as simple, quick, [and] maybe not of the same calibre of a restaurant,” he says.

“There’s a lot of very, very talented people running and working in cafés that do an amazing job, but are restricted by time and by what you can do for a café a la carte menu.

“I wanted to provide an opportunity for our current customer base who maybe doesn’t have time for that sort of thing during the week to come in and have a long lunch, to have something different in a bit more of a relaxed environment… and experience this place and what we do in a different way.

“I think that overall it’s a way for us to communicate what makes us tick, and why we dig coffee and why we dig food in a different way, and why we don’t do the stuff a lot of other cafés do.”