Ode to Sonoma’s rhubarb slurry

Every now and again Tuesdays start particularly well.

It usually has something to do with The Hungry One working from home and being, in equal measures, chivalrous and easily bribed.

It’s a lift to work and breakfast at Sonoma Bakery cafe, Waterloo. It’s close enough to the happy clappies at Hillsong for you to hear such entertaining tidbits as this over your breakfast coffee; “I can’t listen to secular music. It puts ideas in my head. And Jesus just isn’t cool with that”.

I promise it’s more entertaining if you say it in a wide New Jersey drawl and sport an ironic emo mullet.

Sonoma is also host to Single Origin coffee, a boutique blend which here is made with skill and by guys who don’t call attention to their mental stability while serving you. I have a feeling the guys down at Surry Hills’ Resevoir St Single Origin Roasters may be drinking a little too much of something. Their website might invite you to ‘call them for a chat’ but I warn you; they’re pretty intense.

So instead it’s all about Sonoma. You pull into a large carpark which is the size of a primary school playground, almost perpendicular to Dank street. You then meander past the bike riders, choristers and emergency service workers perched on baby stools and try to snaffle the Good Living section from the Herald. It is Tuesday, after all.

For us it has always been an easy order; a large strong flat white for The Hungry One and a bacon and egg toaster-pressed roll, which is given a kick in the pants by a surprisingly spicy relish and mayonnaise. Then it’s hard for him to go past the pastries glinting on industrial racks. The apple and custard or cherry and custard danishes are crunchy on the bottom and sweet without being sinful. For me it’s a large, weak skim latte (lot of milk, little coffee for first thing )and a tartine of sourdough, topped with gruyere and mushrooms, or the soy and linseed toast, studded with real soybeans who play hide and seek, making friends with other assorted pieces of roughage. Or sometimes it’s spelt toast, just because it’s 2008 and it seems to be the what we now do.

But all of that was until I recanted, and I discovered Sonoma’s soaked muesli cup. It’s essentially a big coffee cup, filled with earnest, house blend muesli, which has been gussied up and soaked in juice and yogurt until it dollops out in a splat of bircher goodness.

It’s squishy, comforting, topped with yogurt and a great whack of a rhubarb slurry.
I think if I was going to be reincarnated as a food, I’d be rhubarb slurry. Sweet but slightly tart, a little sloppy around the edges, but still petulant enough to make a point in mixed company. Here it’s a strident voice that’s joined by oats and juice and dairy, almonds and pumpkin seeds and a lick of honey.

It’s only $4 for a cup and it fills your belly.

Somehow, in a little cup it’s suggestive yet secular, sexy yet chaste.

I wonder if the Hillsonger’s like it?

Anyway. It’s my new favourite thing in the world, and I’d like to thank the spiritual powers of the earth, whatever they may be for bringing it into my life.