We did two tours, that while covered totally different parts of Melbourne, gave us a very well rounded view of what the history of the Café Culture in Melbourne as well as the current vibe. The first was provide from The Visitor Melbourne and the second was Hidden Secrets Tours. Both were excellent and both our guides were phenomenal.
Food
The Visitor Melbourne focused specifically on Queen Victoria Market and Carlton, where as Hidden Secrets Tours focused on the laneways of the Central Business District (CBD) (downtown for Americans or city centre for Brits).
Everyone we talked to credits the genesis of the Café Culture with Italian immigration from 1900 to 1950, which made Melbourne in particular ripe for the boom of cafés and coffee shops in the past 10 years. In the CBD there are over 3,600 café, restaurants, and eateries! We were introduced to many of them.
One could argue that there is a heart to good food and good coffee in Melbourne. We met our host for Visitor Melbourne at the “back” of the Queen Victoria Markets where there are what my vision of a market would be. Stalls of traders, trading as she put it “socks and jocks” and I was a little concerned that we were going to spend a good part of a day looking at what would be a very “boring” traditional UK type market, but we were pleasantly surprised.
There is a whole organic section in the market, where the traders are all certified organic and trade in lots of goods. Our host had selected a couple unique/interesting traders for us to visit, including a nut producer, selling Australian grown nuts and a coconut shop, selling all forms of coconut oil based products. There was lots of great fresh produce, all locally grown, all in season.
We were all taken to the food hall, which was filled with vendors, of which our guide from The Visitor had hand picked her favourite little shops, who all spent time with us, explaining what they specialised in. Our guide indicated that on non-busy days, you would find that most of the vendors would gladly tell you about their products and often offer samples, though obviously she had arranged for slightly more robust samples for us. We had everything from the best Australian cheeses, to great cheap wine, to imported Greek olives and shop made dips to accompany them, to Turkish savoury pastries, to very reasonably priced Australian honey. We picked up a few things too, the temptation too great, even though we have to haul stuff around with us for a few months still!
If all this great food wasn’t enough, both tours included lunch. The Visitor took us into Carlton for a relatively new gnocchi bar, where we had a few different types of gnocchi, a couple of salads, and some pizza with a lovely bottle of wine.
For the Hidden Secrets Tours, we were taken to The Captains of Industry, which in addition to the cafe, has a Whiskey shop, a Barber and Men’s Shoe shop. The food was perfect for lunch, Simon having a wonderful steak sandwich and I having a halloumi sandwich.
Coffee
The other thing that everyone agreed on was that while coffee was served in Melbourne, the locals, being mostly British, fixated on tea. The real birth of coffee culture was when Pellegrini’s imported the first espresso machine in 1953 from Italy. This gave birth to a love of coffee that spread throughout the city.
Now, you can barely throw a stone without hitting a coffee shop or café that will serve you an excellent roasted cup of coffee. The inventors of the flat white, both the shops and customers can take their coffee very seriously. Our guide from Hidden Secrets Tours used to be a barista, but she was sort of tired of it when customers started insisting on exactly what temperature to heat their milk to.
To get a sense though of how serious Melbourne is about coffee, I have had to borrow a letter written from a barista to a customer. The customer was the friend’s nail technician. The receiver was upset, but my friend actually went out of the way to go try this baristas coffee after the letter:
That being said, we found that taking coffee seriously does produce some really nice coffees. We sampled some excellent cold drip, the best flat whites (of course) and several other coffees during our stay. While there was certainly plenty of espresso, unlike Italy, coffee with some form of milk was expected.
Several of the coffee shops actually roasted their coffee on-site. For example, at the Queen Victoria Market, there is the Coffea Cafe. Our guide from The Visitor Melbourne introduced us to the owner, who sat down with us and explained a lot of the details of the coffee roasting and brewing process.
