Saint Larry, Perth City Library
What happens when the creative heads behind the Halford Bar and The Standard work together? They gave birth to a cool joint called Saint Larry, a new café located at the Perth City Library. Saint Larry opened late December last year to enrich the vastly expanding Cathedral Square. I visited them on the weekend after eyeing some photos of their sandwiches on Instagram.
The café was very airy with seatings available inside and outside of the library. Each table was decorated with succulent plants in a cute concrete vase. I chose to sit outside to enjoy the good view especially because the weather wasn’t overly chilly during this time of the month. It was a café where you can just sit, enjoy a sip of coffee, read a book (or some mangas) from the library and let the day go by.
The name Saint Larry was very fitting for the café because it was a reference to St Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks. My friend and I was really excited to try different sandwiches that Saint Larry has in the menu. Unfortunately the coffee that we ordered were over-roasted, leaving us with some bitter burnt taste in our mouth.
After a lot of thought I decided on the Portobello mushrooms with caramelized onion, crumbled goat's feta and mushroom bacon. The brioche bun was so fluffy and soft that I didn’t need to put much effort to cut it. The mushroom married well with the combination of caramelized onion and shredded spinach. I really love this sandwich and even though I wanted to try something else, I know that there’s a high chance for me to order this again.
Roast Chicken Roll
My friend went for the roast chicken thigh with Korean BBQ sauce, fresh herbs, green mango, cucumber, crispy shallots and peanut sauce. This particular sandwich reminded us of the taste of Indonesian salad called gado-gado, which was vegetables mixed in peanut sauce. The ciabatta bread was quite hard and we couldn’t use the wooden cutlery to cut it. Be careful when you order this because it could get a bit messy with the sauce.
Unfortunately the balcony on level 3 couldn’t be accessed when we went there due to construction work that’s ongoing but once it’s finished, you can also bring your meal to level 3 and enjoy it there just like Laura.