Archive for category cafe
Picture cafe
Posted by tzuyen in Photography, cafe on December 28, 2010
Love cafes, wood, glass and just the general feeling of goodness. Needless to say, good coffee is important. According to a comedian I heard on TV yesterday, having kids late is not good because we forget what kids enjoy. She said “look at a cafe with mums with their young kids. Have you heard the f@cking screaming they do?”
A Bottle of Milk, Lorne.
Plating
I have been very amazed at the quality of the food from a few Melbourne cafe’s lately. Produce driven, seasonal, innovative menus and beautiful presentations at a fraction of the price you might pay for in a restaurant with starched, white linen. These are from Dead Man Espresso. It seems not long ago when city cafe’s that planted their own herbs and some veggies was unheard of. I am still playing around with colour management between my monitor and softwares.
Dandelion & Driftwood
It’s in a suburb with quite a few doctors’s homes. You might be able to point around the street and say that’s a radiologist, that’s a ophthalmologist, that’s a anaesthetist and the dermatologist is next door (R-O-A-D to medicine). I was lucky enough that my friend who works in a couple of cafes in Brisbane told me about the opening of Peter Wolff’s new cafe. What a lovely place – bright, cosy and waitering staff in colourful and chirpy ties. I really like the “dandelion” lamp and incidentally on the same day I went to IKEA and saw the same (or very similar) design. The work bench is a bit small for the number of machines and equipment – the wall of grinders is like a fence between the bar and the customers.
On the espresso front, there are two blends: Dandelion (more females like it) and Driftwood (more males like it). As expected, just like in perfumes, the stereotypical scent/aroma profiles of feminine (more fruity, floral) versus masculine (earthy, bitter) are portrayed. There are other methods of brewing available, including cold drip, siphon and a fairly new machine called the Trifecta. It’s a more manual kind of the Clover in my opinion. The machine allows adjustment to parameters such as time, pre-infusion, pressures, agitation and aeration. The coffee looks and taste a bit like the Clover. Compared to a Siphon brew, it’s a little murky, more on the acidic/fruity side and less earth. I’ll pretty much leave you to decide on what you think about the results.
Speaking generally, there are more and more different methods of brewing coffee and cafes are trying to be a step ahead all the time with new machines and gadgets. Consistency will be a big issue when there are so many different brewing methods which potentially require different roasts.
Cold drip and siphon
It's bright and cosy
The bench table facing outside
tea set
The dandelion
Trifecta brewed coffee
De Clieu
Finally, a good place for coffee near St Vicent’s Hospital! Unfortunately I will be in Kew and Peter MacCallum till the end of the year. Gertrude St has been getting a food-lift in the past few years with a pizzeria , bakery, tapas bar and a fine dining restaurant added to the bookshop with only food related books. It’s about time coffee was added.
Created by the owners of 7 Seeds, good coffee will be expected from De Clieu. Day 2 of opening and people are already populating this place like it’s been there for a while. The food menu is short (good), interesting, and acknowledges individual suppliers for quality products. They are going to very busy on the weekends. I hope they allow people in scrubs to walk in too.
Interestingly, while I was browsing the web, I found out that 7 Seeds is also the title of a manga series about life long after a meteorite destroyed most of life in Earth. A side track anyway. The 7 seeds of cafe name refers to the story that a a pilgrim named Baba Budan smuggled 7 coffee beans from the Middle East to India and subsequently spread it from Africa/Middle East to the rest of the world. Gabriel de Clieu was known to transport 2 coffee plants from Europe to the South American Island of Martinique, from where coffee spread to the Americas (according to Wiki).
With coffee demand growing so rapidly sometimes I do think about the sustainability of coffee as a crop.
Monk Bodhi Dharma
Rear 202 Carlisle St, Balaclava VIC 3183 Australia. Enter from the lane on the left of Safeway.
I think this design has been done to death in Melbourne. Distressed brick walls, ex-warehouse, clipboard menus, Synesso and did I mention Synesso? Uniquely they use old sewing machines as coffee tables! I think these guys have done pretty well with their own roasted beans and carefully textured milk. The food is vegetarian only (no eggs) and they serve ‘specialty’ teas – hence the Buddist-ish references in the name. I had a French toast which was made with baguette slices with saffron caramel with a poached pear. Surprisingly very nice (surprisingly, as there are no eggs involved). The caramel was too hard when it cooled though.
But hang on, and 1 or 2 monthly vegan breakfast degustation? Sounds pretty original. One thing I don’t get is why chose such a small location only to want to solve the problem so soon after opening?
Obscure signs
Clipboard, check. ACF-like cups, check. Rosetta, check
This is pretty much the entire cafe, plus 3 tables to the right
Saffron French toast with poached pear
The cutest stack of cupcakes in Melbourne!
Sowing machine tables
Entrance and a make-shift table outside
Summer (spring), winter is back
Posted by tzuyen in Photography, cafe on September 28, 2010
Best Sunday for a long time. Warm(ish), 20 degrees, clear skies, no work and fresh vomit from patient yesterday well cleaned. Early afternoon at Dead Man Espresso with “Thomas Keller’s BLT“. The deconstructed sandwhich consists of soft, white bread that is well buttered and evenly toasted (? fried). The filling is roasted pork with crackling and spinach puree. On the side is a mini-latte glass of tomato gazpacho. A mixed leafy salad included. Love the pork. It’s a brilliant idea but didn’t work for me on the whole. The gazpacho could do with more flavour. I’d rather have a super ripe slice of tomato. The spinach puree…was supposed to be more of a rocket puree. But really good idea to incorporate fresh take on the all-so-common eggy breakfast. And well done for using really fresh salad leaves (they are growing their own herbs).
"Thomas Keller's BLT" from Dead Man Espresso
Take note…pork belly is as common as the Synesso in Melbourne now.
After lunch and a great coffee, we headed to Port Melbourne Beach and felt…cold! It reminded me when I was in Norway after a few months of below zero temperature. A sunny day, warm (relative) and the entire student village was outside on the lawn receiving their yearly dose of vitamin D with the famous engangsgrill. We went to a small island off the city center for a BBQ and realized it was really ‘only’ 12 degrees.
Summer at Port Melbourne was a bit early
I still love the cold.
three bags full
Food: fine and decent price (Edit – third time – love the fig and raspberry bread)
Coffee: nice but luke warm (second time now). (Edit – third time – good!)
Service: great
On a separate note. I walked into the Aesop shop at QV and asked for the hand soap, the one with the Atlas Cedarwood. She told be it was $37. I said i’ll think about that really hard. Hmmm which cafe uses it? 7 seeds, Cumulus, I think Bistro Vue and maybe Cafe Vue. Three bags full had it too.
What’s the next Melbourne cafe trend? It was the Synesso and the industrial look. The single origin beans became the standard and at once there was even single origin hot chocolate. Then different brewing methods came about with the clover, then the siphon followed quickly by the filter drip. Inevitably some cafes have to give a 2 min (pre-recorded) speech about different methods of brewing and how to drink each coffee before letting me order. Beakers became the new vase. A communal table with a large flower center piece was stuck in somewhere too. Fresh blended juices became the new juice. Recently single estate sugar is appearing (which I must admit taste really good so I spoon a heap into my finished coffee cup to eat on its own). To top things off, today someone ordered “chai latte” and was asked by the waiter “if it was with normal milk?”!
I am not keen on the idea that soap was $37 a bottle. Just give me more French butter on my toast.
A photo tour:
A long communal table
Sweets and stuff
I want the cup and saucer lights!
People, chairs, tables and lights
Steak sandwich
The Bottle of Milk – Lorne
The front of house
It’s a joy to drive along the winding road from Deans Marsh to Lorne - a good detour from my drive back to Melbourne. My friend told me to try the coffee (and burgers) at The Bottle of Milk in Lorne. Mellie went there last year and enjoyed the burgers and chips. The coffee is roasted by 7 Seeds (my favorite roaster/cafe in Melbourne). That’s all the incentive I need. The flat white I had was one of the best coffees I’ve had outside of Melbourne. Still a little too hot and the milk not as silky as it could be on the Synesso. But better than the coffee I had at Simon’s in Warrnambool. 7 Seeds doesn’t have many accounts and good for them for keeping it ‘specialty’. It’s difficult to judge a cafe’s standards with just one visit so I will reserve comments to just the cup I had on that day. What I will say is well done for getting decent coffee on a touristy town.
Burger talk. I had the Fire Engine beef, cheese, coriander, chili sauce. The bun was delicious, dense and toasted well. The beef was juicy and cooked to medium well.
7 Seeds beans but is it up to 7 Seeds standards?
Windows make interesting pictures
The Fire Engine burger
A Minor Place
Cute outdoor seating
I was more interested in capturing the feel of this cafe. I think I am missing a twilight shot showing the cafe in it’s suburban surroundings. Warm interior, subdivided into rooms just like a home. Milk crates and foldout tables against the weather boards. The corn fritter was very good, especially with the tangy salsa. Bacon was not done well as was the giant tree of coriander on top (chop it please?). I am noticing more and more cafes being know for their on non-egg breakfasts and A Minor Place started relatively early with their Henry’s white beans. Coffee had been better in the cafe’s earlier days. The beans did not taste fresh.
This was probably a house prior renovations
Excellent corn fritters with salsa
Hot chocolate and grapes before sleep
