Last Friday I met with my mum, my aunty from Queensland and my kids and their mother for lunch at Crown, which is right near my office. My mum had to be somewhere around 1:30, so we made sure to have an early lunch there around 11 so we could earn some Crown Rewards Points towards earning me another 6 months of Silver Tier free parking.
Given that my boys, 2 and 4 love “chippies” we had promised them the Merrywell burger bar…
Here’s the thing, though… Almost none of Crown’s proper restaurants are open before 12pm even on a Friday. Yes, the terrible food court is open, but that doesn’t earn me points. My first instinct was to go to Baci, the 24-hour cafe & pizza restaurant at Crown, which wasn’t too far away, but when we got there. We saw that the kids menu (which “chippies” were also part of) did not start until 12 either. The four adults and two kids walked into Baci and asked the waitress if it was at all possible to get chips yet, and she looked at the menu and told us “nope, they start at 12” so I was like “OK we’re gong to Maccas” then saw that a few doors down, Cervo, the slightly more upmarket Italian restaurant was opening at 11:30 and that they served chips. We waited around for 15 minutes and looked at the goldfish tank outside Lucky Chan, and gave my 2-year-old a snack as he was really hungry.
Once we got into Cervo, the staff were super helpful and our food came quite fast. We were all quite happy with it. Whilst we were initially thinking of sharing some pizzas, I had the Penne Agio Olio with added mushroom & cherry tomato. This was really good but I think it could have used some protein. My mum and aunty shared the Arancini and Calamari Fritti, the boys had a big bowl of crunchy chips and their mum had the Pumpkin Ravioli.
We were all quite satisfied and the view from the restaurant of the Yarra River was nice. We were hoping to see a helicopter land, but none came whilst we were there. After collecting my Crown Rewards points, I ran back off to work.
