Small Block

If you want amazing food, coffee and customer service then this is a must-see cafe to visit. There are many different items on the menu and they are willing to cater to many different dietary restrictions. I would recommend trying the smashed avocado on gf toast.

I liked the décor and the msuic but the old school(?) chairs are past it, torn and feel like an old camping 70's chair - uncomfortable. Coffee was okay - blueberry and dark chocolate muffin was dry and missing blueberries. So just a pass.

Tasty breakfast option and solid coffee - just what u need on a workday commute for a quick hit or even better on the weekend when u can laze away on a second or third coffee

Nice small cafe in East Brunswick. Good food at a very good price, in comparison to a lot of places in Melbourne, would come back again if in the area

A place that focuses on the coffee and the food. Friendly staff. Indoor and some outdoor seating. Food throughout the day is delicious. Can't miss. Interesting murals on the outside.

Good coffee, nice Brunswick feel, decor is cool...

A bit patchy when it comes to service and decor however the food was superb. The waitress delivered 1/2 of the order incorrectly, I suppose that can happen from the best of us. Decor is a bit dated and ok, it's not a posh restaurant. The food, cook to perfection. That is rare, all the ingredients were fresh and I polished my plate. The coffee was nice, not too hot and not cold which is a nice change. Overall a decent grub, I'll go back.

Cute little cafe with usually friendly service and great coffee. Shame that the food lets it down. Both times I've been here I waited a half hour for my food to come out and the cafe wasn't particularly busy. The first time I had the corn fritters and added bacon. The fritters were very plain and the chilli jam they came with overly sweet for my tastes. The second time I had the pesto scramble. It was extremely wet and the eggs were not cooked all the way through, very unpleasant. The menu prices are pretty cheap but the food ranges from unmemorable to inedible.

The menu has slightly changed since COVID. But the quality of the food and variety on the menu was good. I had the Summer Breakfast and my friend had the scrambled eggs. We both enjoyed our dishes. Service was fast and friendly. The interior looks casual and they have outdoor area too.

I've been coming here for 12 years and it's still my favourite place to get a coffee. The cafe has changed hands a few times but the food, coffee and service has remained consistent. I LOVE the ricotta pancakes, they are rich and so delicious. I do have the poached eggs on toast when I'm In the mood for something less rich and again they are great. My husband had the French toast which was a special. He would have loved some fruit on his toast but he was quite happy. This cafe used to be so busy that you often had to queue for tables. There are more cafes around so I guess it's natural for it to be less busy but I can't help thinking that perhaps it's time for a refurbishment as the decor hasn't changed in years.

If you're in the area, this is a good spot for breakfast/coffee. Lattes are decent, and lots of good egg options, plus several variety of freshly baked muffins/cakes. Staff is friendly and there's a little area for kids to play.

This place is always packed in the mornings and especially on weekends so you know it has to be pretty good. It's quite old but they've decorated the interior quite nicely and it has a bit of a retro feel about it which always gets a tick from me. Small Block offers you a choice between the all-day brekkie or off menu as well. I had a flat white and the Schnitzel sandwich with potatoes, gherkin and dill salad which was nice. Friendly staff, good food, broad menu - I will definitely be going back some other time.

The breakfast scene is pretty happening in Brunswick East. There are a wealth of really good cafes and it has to be considered a breakfast hotspot. Small Block is probably one of the originals and has been serving great coffee and a delicious menu the whole time I've lived in Melbourne. The thing that is great about Small Block is also the thing that is annoying. Its small size (as the name suggests) gives it a really intimate feel and the service is very personal. But this is also a downside because you wanna eat here but can't because it gets packed and is very popular. If you aren't starving I'd say it is worth the wait. See if you can grab a coffee outside and watch the world go round. If you are ravenous, there are plenty of places round the corner.

There are so many great cafes to choose from in this part of Brunswick East these days, and Small Block is amongst the best of them. It's been around a few years and has consistently delivered the goods, namely huge, all day breakfasts and coffee just as everyone likes it. My go-to breakfast here is the summer breakfast, which despite the name, is just as delicious and filling in colder months as it is in balmy weather. It's a dreamy combination of perfectly cooked eggs served on buttered toast surrounded by spinach, beetroot relish, feta and avocado. Other notables are the ricotta pancakes with saffron pears and Barbados cream, and the corn fritters with chilli jam. If you're nipping in for a quick coffee and something sweet on the side, you simply must give the melty, custardy Portuguese tarts a try. Service can be slow at times, but this isn't the kind of place you want to rush away from anyway. Depending on the time of day, you may be swamped by neighbourhood hipsters, but hopefully there will be a few normal folk in there too should you decide to drop in. It's nice inside especially at the corner tables in the back room or by the front window where you can watch the Lygon Street action, but my favourite spot, especially on a sunny afternoon, are the outside tables facing out onto Piera Street.

This was one of the first contemporary cafés to hit the northern part of Lygon Street and has heralded a wave of followers. Simply yet stylishly decorated the interior has a slight industrial feel. The café is a conversion of an old house. The front room, that contains the service area opens up to another cosy lounge room. The carpets have been lifted and the concrete floor has been polished. The coffee here is outstanding, every time I try it, it simply blows me away. The seasonal menu will tempt you to eat everything, and you should, just maybe not all at once. If you going to start somewhere, please try the mushrooms, they are divine. Small block also have the smallest outside area of any café, anywhere. Cosy enough to pop out for a fag.

Greeted with a warm beautiful smile by Celia the gorgeous blonde young lady who runs this delightful little cafe in the heart of brunswick east, i have made this my go to breakfast cafe for those rare weekdays off work. Everything is delicious and the menu is flexible if you desire mixing in something extra to your order. Staff are happy and friendly which is rare in a lot of cafes these days, and it shows in the warm inviting atmosphere when you walk through the door. If you are in the area definitely pop in, the coffee is superb and food very satisfyingly scrumptious.

First time here and had a great breakfast, I ordered the Huevos rancheros and the salsa on top was so nice and fresh, really good and tasty!

I love this place. So much so, that's it going to start a new list- Favourite spots of Melbourne. This is the place that you could imagine is run by your friends. It's even the cafe that would spring up in the back of a mate's large house. It has that homely feel. Its great value too; I got a goats cheese something or other on toast for around $11 and it was a decent size. Unlike most places these days which charge a king's ransom for a single curd of goat's cheese and and 20 cent sized piece of toast. One is well accommodated here. Of course there's much more to the cafe than this. More breakfast food one would Imagine too. Healthy servings I would imagine too. Good coffee, and from memory drink-y things. It's kind outta the way, but it was on another accidental occasion that i found this. being dropped an odd way home, i scanned the length of lygon street, to see what's happening these day. This place caught my eye. "Oohhh, I have to go there, it looks rad! It has a bicycle parking bay thing." I did go there it was rad. Which reminds me, i should go back so I can eat something more.

Hands down my favourite breakfast spot on Lygon St. I love a place that makes great coffee and offers not only all day breakfast, but lets you order off menu for those hungover days when you're feeling a bit picky. You'll have to wait for a table sometimes on the weekend but I find it's usually worth it.

Absolutely beautiful coffee served here. A magnificent brew. Lots of care taken choosing the beans and making it. There's evidence pride in the whole process and it really shows. Slightly quirky but sort of endearing service. This is a lovely bright wide former shop with high ceilings. I liked the fit out. Good music on. Had a very good feel about it here. Nice place. I'll be back for food at some point.

Love the Summer Breakfast here, with beetroot relish, avocado, soft feta, eggs & sourdough toast.

I went here with three of my mates for a meal. It was a bit late for breakfast but not really lunch time yet, I guess it was some kind of intermediate period between the two. The waiter looked at Chris while he was making up his mind and said, "oh, what lovely thick hair you have!" Then he turned to Taron and said, "wow, you have lovely thick hair as well! I like it!" Then he turned to Robinson and said, "and indeed you, you have lovely thick hair as well!" And then he looked at me and said nothing. Is my hair not good enough for you, guy? If I was more of a guy who liked eating meals in the space between the traditional times for breakfast and luncheon, I would come here more often. Coffee is great and I like the intimate outdoor seating on Piera Street. But I will definitely wear a hat next time.

The two things worth draggin me to this cute little cafe? 1. all-day, huge plates of brekkie 2. amazing steak sandwich. super yum, because sometimes you can't even bite into and tear apart a steak sandwich without cutting the roof of your mouth and not actually breaking apart the steak. this one is good.

Small Block is an absolutely lovely little cafe. The food is incredibly tasty and the staff are friendly and welcoming. Their specials are always really inventive and highly tempting. The one negative is that if you're a tea drinker you'd better be prepared to ask for a hot water top up, because their teapots are tiny and they barely fill them half way. But given that the coffee is nice and they're licensed to serve alcohol in the evenings, this is pretty well compensated.

Used to work close by, and was the first place (maybe 8 years + ago) to get a great coffee. Glad to see it still going well, and are keeping up with their great reputation..1st one of their kind in a now bustling part of Lygon street, good work!

Every element of my experience today was utterly lacking. The staff were slow, distant and distracted. The coffee was insipid and the cup of my partner's coffee was covered in fluff. I could put up with these things if the food had been good. It wasn't remotely. Poached eggs so cooked they could have been hard boiled; a chili jam that lacks sweetness or nuanced flavour; undercooked, doughy corn fritters (served with sour cream for some inexplicable reason); bacon served with the rind attached; a rarebit that amounted to cheese on a barely toasted bagel. I will compliment them on the prices: they are generally quite low. Considering how bad the food (and service is) this amounts to the only saving grace of the cafe. I will never come here again.

Beans and the mushrooms were delicious and altogether was fairly reasonably priced. My coffee was lumpy and seemed as though the soy milk had been heated and reheated several times, which is dissapointing when you're hanging out for the first coffee of the day.. Not sure if i would go back.

Dear S-Block, You know after all this time I still have serious like for you. That banana french toast may be long gone, but we still hang out a few times a year, right? Your summer breakfast - the sort of artful clash of colorful, flavorsome goop that an art-making art-person may get very excited about - still sits in the all-time top10 cafe breks of my heart. Plus there's the hotcakes with the pear and effed up barbados cream aaand your on-the-money eggs benny. Coffee is solid and service is just the right balance of familiar & efficient, but c'mon dude.... why do you persist with those freakin' chairs inside? Y'know, the ones you built for that small humanoid guy semi-recently discovered in Indonesia, even though he won't ever sit on them BECAUSE HE'S DEAD. My butt isn't big or anything, it's a normal, but it just can't cope with that kind of discomfort for more than 25 minutes. I can't be the only one feeling this, can I? Sigh. Anyways, see you soon-ish.

I have been going to Small Block for, well...more than seven years now. (Gosh has it been that long!) Not much has changed. The menu is still excellent and the coffee good. There was a period where this moderately sized cafe was packed to the brim every weekend making it impossible to navigate with a pram and toddlers but with the emergence or many cafes in the area this has changed and seating is easier. Weekdays have always been good. The summer breakfast is a fantastic mix of feta, eggs, toast, beetroot relish, spinach and avacado, a forkful of each element at once is simply amazing. My son cannot go past the eggs Benny, he begs us to come her for those. The ricotta pancakes are my daughters favourite and I am always happy to provide as the Barbados cream and pear is unique and totally yummy. (Let's just say she doesn't get to eat it by herself!) Small block has been one of my favourite cafes for years and I'm hope it will continue to be for years to come. But I do feel it needs a bit of a Reno (both in food and decor) if it wants to stay a favourite in the area. Expect to pay an average of around $19 per person with a meal and coffee. That's good value for this area.

Small block is a great breakfast cafe. The people who work there are friendly and helpful but not overbearing at all. The place definitely has a family atmosphere, with regulars coming in and chatting with the staff over their morning coffee or breakfast. The eggs Benedict was my definition of perfection, but if that's not your cup of tea their menu has a wide variety of options.

Great coffee, nice setup, friendly staff, just don't go when it's almost closing time or they'll hassle you until you're uncomfortable enough to leave quick smart.

Great food, great coffee. Typical bohemian East Brunswick cafe. Great place to spend a couple of hours on a weekend morning.

Today I took my husband to Small Block for the first time. I, myself, have been a few times and never had any previous complaints. My husband doesn't like busy or overly pretentious Cafes so I thought this would be a place he might be able to enjoy. It also happens to be the closest cafe to our house. We arrived and grabbed my favourite table out back. We were only there for coffee and didn't intend on staying very long. We ordered, coffee arrived, so far so good, even hubby seemed comfortable. And then a few more people arrived and our waiter asked if we would move tables. I was half way through my coffee and we would have been on our way soon enough. We decided rather than moving tables we would just skull our coffees and leave. There were people on other tables with computers who had been there far longer than us (and who were also not eating) but they were not asked to move. We stood up disappointed and waited to pay, although considering our treatment we were pretty unhappy about having to pay for coffees that we couldn't enjoy properly. We noticed that the table went to two guys and we were even more upset as the waiter had told us there was a party of 4 going to be seated there but it turns out half the party hadn't even arrived yet. So we had left our table just so a party of two could take our place. Suffice to say we will never return. We suggest your staff learn basic hospitality etiquette and allow people already seated to finish before seating new customers. Absolutely disgraceful.