The Picnic Burwood

This outdoor Burwood eatery is part cafe and part luxe picnic.

You’ve got two options. Either sit down in a leafy pagoda built around the park’s open-air kiosk, or grab a mat, some takeout and sit under a tree. If you email ahead you can order a banquet in a basket with a variety of premium cured meats and cheeses, sandwiches, salads, cold-pressed juices and house-baked pastries.

The eat-in menu has a bunch of dishes you probably won’t find elsewhere in the Burwood area. Watermelon and French toast is served surrounded by edible flowers, fresh fruit, Persian fairy floss, a berry reduction and dulce de leche. There’s a seasonally flavoured pannacotta granola (The Picnic has served lavender, vanilla and pandan flavours so far); coconut-water iced coffees with mint; and a Lebanese-inspired breakfast board with skillet fried za’atar eggs, haloumi, labneh, pickles and either bacon, Egyptian-styled air-dried beef or lamb merguez.

You might expect a mash of tartan colours and plastic cutlery at a picnic-inspired cafe, but this is far more elegant. The cafe is simple, with a white-and-yellow colour scheme with a Grounds of Alexandria-level of greenery that’s spread across the perimeter of the cafe’s gazebo, under its ceiling and all over the tables.