We’re calling it right now: the breakfast roll at Beautiful Jim Key has a red-hot shot at the title of the best breakfast roll in town. It’s not rocket surgery, it’s just egg, cheese, sausage (okay, smoked sausage), barbecue sauce and mayo, wrapped up in a soft potato bun. In other words, the perfect handful. The wheel is not reinvented, but the product is good, and there’s just enough chef jazz there in the smoked sausage and the potato bun, the handsome proportions to make it A Thing.
“It’s the least fancy thing on the menu,” says Josh Murphy, Jim Key’s chef and co-owner. “But it works.” The sausage is a Lyonnaise from Meatsmith, which he says he ate a lot of during COVID. The egg is a steamed slice, a bit like what you’d see on the breakfast sandwiches at Hector’s or AP, only a little finer. The bun is soft and delicate, but has the structural integrity to hold together right to the last bite.
He’s personally all about the broccoli and pecorino toastie, sharpened up with chilli and lemon. There’s the option to add anchovies – singly or a whole tin of Yurritas, if you prefer – and Murphy likes to tear his toastie into soldiers and lay a fillet across each.
You might know him as one of the founders of Footscray West landmark Harley & Rose, and as the chef of Moon Under Water, the dearly missed finer-dining room at The Builders Arms. But Murphy has serious chops in the breakfast department; as head chef of Cumulus Inc back in the day, he was frontline for years in establishing the reputation it enjoyed for years for next-level breakfasting.
It’s been more than a decade since Murphy has cooked a breakfast service, but the lessons he learned at Cumulus come through on his menus clear and keen. If you’ve found a lot of breakfast menus lately blighted by sameness or, worse, nakedly trying way too hard for likes and shares, the carte at Jim Key is going to make you happy.
That principle of just enough jazz lights it up over and over. Another of Murphy’s picks is the curried soft boiled eggs, brightened with a mango chutney. He’s also quite in love with the hash brown with smoked trout, fresh cheese and soft herbs from Ramarro Farm. The dhal on the lunch menu is another Murphy pick, the inspiration courtesy of his partner Priyam Chovhan – “Priyam makes an outrageous dhal, and the recipe is hers” – while Murphy hit up his pal Eun Hee An at Moon Mart for advice on how to take the shiitake, green onion and brown rice congee he eats at home for breakfast into something fit for a café. (It’s vegan, at least till you take the option to add a soft egg and/or a scallop.)
At lunch, ’nduja ramps the albacore tuna ragu with casarecce pasta, oysters come with crackers, salted butter and hot sauce, and the fries are done skin-on with aïoli. There’s pikelets with strawberries and soldiers and eggs on the kids’ menu, while drinks are a draw in themselves – Tommy’s Margaritas, smart Spritz options, and a list of about 15 wines that’s big on interest and reasonable on price.
And then there’s the French toast. When, oh when, you’ve been asking yourself, will someone put Montenegro on a breakfast menu. And here it is, a syrup of the gently bitter amaro poured over custardy bread, blood orange and crème fraîche. Beautiful, Jim Key.
Beautiful Jim Key, 7am-3pm Tues-Sat, 8am-3pm Sun, 7 Wilson Ave, Brunswick, beautifuljimkey.com.au, @beautifuljimkey
By Pat Nourse