Platter Pantry

Platter Pantry occupies shop 1 at 71 Wicklow Avenue in Croydon, a French-leaning cafe and providore in Melbourne's outer east. It opens 8am to 3pm Monday through Saturday and winds up at 2pm on Sundays, so it covers breakfast and lunch seven days. The counter is built around the platter concept: curated cheese boards, grazing boxes and toasties, backed by croissants, carrot cake and a rotation of baked goods that rewards arriving before the lunch rush.

Dogs are allowed at the outdoor patio seating, with the OpenTable listing tagging the venue dog friendly and the Google listing carrying the dogs-allowed-outside attribute. In practice that means the patio is where you and your dog settle, and the staff run orders out to the tables rather than asking you to queue inside. The Wicklow Avenue setting is a quiet side of the Croydon strip, which keeps the patio calm for dogs that find busier footpaths overwhelming.

The vibe

The French theme runs through more than the cheese curation: the fit-out and the menu both lean European deli, and visitors regularly single out the staff for their manner with tables and their patience with long, lazy orders. It is a grazer's cafe rather than a big-breakfast one, so the move with a dog in tow is a cheese platter and a coffee, taken slowly on the patio. Weekend mornings fill first; a weekday visit or an early Sunday, before the 2pm close, is the relaxed option.

Make a day of it

Pair the pantry with a lap of Croydon's dog infrastructure: Bede Spillane Reserve's fenced dog park gives your dog a proper off-lead stretch, and Queen Street Cafe and The Jolly Miller round out the cafe circuit if you are making a morning of it. The Croydon destination guide pulls the suburb's dog-friendly options together.