Melbourne Cafe Reviews

Qdos
35 Allenvale Road
Lorne VIC 3232
Ph (03) 5289 1989

Two classics in a row. It happens but rarely. After my Blue Dolphin experience, I arrive in Lorne on a Queens Birthday weekend. The day is wet and cold. The lunch places along the town strip are packed. None look inviting, and several look positively nauseating.

Friends some years ago had taken me to Qdos for a coffee. I head there. Qdos is a sculpture park set amongst tall timber. It has an art gallery and cafe. It also caters for weddings and those kinds of things. Accommodation is available. The Japanese-influenced style is evident everywhere. Please take time to look and appreciate. A perky, vivacious and competent young waitress is taking orders and making coffees.

I take a glass of Austin’s 07 Sauvignon Blanc. Coffee is Genovese. I have vegetable soup. Another friend has pea and ham. She is impressed: “easily the best I’ve had — you could see the strings — these soups take days to prepare. You can do pumpkin in 20 minutes.” The soup comes with a neat Zen stack of four pieces of bread. Another friend has a “toastie” — ham, roasted pumpkin, caramelised onion and chutney, with salad. Again, wonderful bread. An antipasto for two comes in @ $22. A pizza of roast veggies, pesto, feta and olives @ $18. Beef and Guinness pie with salad, $16. Food comes in specially fired bowls and plates. The whole experience is art. Go there!

Blue Dolphin Cafe
84 Newcombe St
Portarlington
Ph (03) 5259 1600

Come here and you’ll see diamonds. Make your way past a missable entrance to a place of style and comfort. My long black (Jasper Fair Trade coffee) comes in a cup correctly filled, with good crema and depth of flavour, and served by the owner with delicacy and grace. Normally, if I’m at a place for lunch I deign to purchase sweets. But who could resist the range of home-made cakes, slices, pastries and biscuits that this place purveys?

Here there is awareness of the customer and her needs. Scarcely have I grabbed a glass than a bottle of water is set upon the table.

Two generously-filled glasses of red are brought to the window table of two ladies. The sea outside, through a screen of leaves.

I like the feel of Portarlington. There is only a single line of shops. Over the road is parkland, and beyond that, the pier and the sea. Because of this concentration there is a sense of containment and true village life. There is a sense of order and compactness.

The Turkish owner tells me he’s been going five years and he has clearly established a fine standard. Two wood-framed blackboards on the wall list the specials and the soup of the day. Today it’s pumpkin. Banquettes along one wall. Pide dreads and focaccias. Chicken, mushroom and leek pie with salad. Tasmanian Smoked Salmon Salad.

Bright paintings on the wall. Two shelves of books. Wines — Portalington Ridge, Bellarine Estate and Aspen Estate rest on a sideboard.

This place is well worth the trip out from Geelong. Or Melbourne. There are fine walks along the coast and fit people could make it to St. Leonards — and return.

Georgie’s Cafe
Main St
Stawell VIC

Grey lino floor; black tables; comfortable chairs; a pair of sofas at the front window. On this cold June day I am alone with a cope of Alistair MacCLeod’s Island.

Shelving holds items of variable interest: Mt Zero kalamata olives; jars of dukkah and olive oil; free-range eggs from Great Western; Silvertip teas; honey from the Grampians Lavender Patch.

Normal things on offer: soups; egg & bacon muffin; raisin toast; ham & cheese toastie; tomato & salami frittata. You get the picture. My lentil & vegie soup is of fair quality. Two remarkable pieces of bread accompany the soup. I do wish cafes, especially in the rural realms, would pay a little more attention to the comfort of a good whack of real bread.

Coffee is ordinary, yet it promises more. In fact the whole place promises more. It lists through the excellence of a few sweet things—my French vanilla slice @ $4.50 was of a rare quality.

After lunch I am directed by a friendly local to the library. Here I find bliss. A warm inviting space with comfortable reading chairs and a big work table overlooking a discrete courtyard. The peace and silence of a library in a quiet country town. Melbourne knows nothing of this. I pick up Dorothy Rowe’s blue-covered Depression from a shelf and nestle into a comfy chair. My bus is yet hours away.

Queenscliff Courtyard Cafe & Nursery
3/58 Hesse St
Queenscliff
Ph (03) 5258 2856

My companion and I dive in here, via a narrow race, to a sweet little cubbyhole of a cafe leading on to outdoor seating and a nursery. White walls, relaxed vibe; pretty lights wink from the ceiling. Reasonable coffee. Leaf Tea for sale. The Wisdom of Asia — 365 days on a shelf. Vanilla slice $5; Jelly Cakes with cream $4; Chocolate Kisses $3; Vege Lasagna with salad $13; Free range eggs $6.50; Murray River gourmet Salt Flakes; Chicken satay wrap $13; Moroccan & Chickpea soup $9.

Earlier in the afternoon I visit the library. On this particular day (Wednesday) it was closed, but at the entrance there are two small annexes. One is the Tourist Office and the other is the newspaper Reading Room. An absolute treasure! One of life’s true discoveries! two chairs and a timeworn oval table. On a rack, newspapers for the past week. This space was a gift to Everyman. (more…)

Bagdad Foods Cafe
50 Darlot St 
Horsham VIC
(Crn Darlot & Natimuk Rd. Next to Baker’s Delight)

Casting a leftwards glance through the vertical window, the lurid colours of WIMMERA BOLTS AND FASTENERS meet my gaze. A shit-heavy B-double lumbers past the roundabout and heads down Natimuk Road. But inside the cafe, at my blackpainted table, I listen to the tinkle of plates and cutlery being delivered up to the dishwasher. It’s 2 p.m. The lunch crowd have disappeared. Unlike Melbourne, this wonderful country establishment is peopled at regular times.

There is a tiled front section and a few tables on the pavement outside the building. On the wall, a mirror framed in the form of a pineapple. From the tiled area, up a step, is the small carpeted inner sanctum, set up with two larger tables, one table for four and two tables for two. On the shelves sit books of enticing titles: Frank Lloyd Wright: Prairie Houses; James Martin Desserts; Italian Country Living; Morocco by Philippe Saharoff and Francesca Torre. Copies of The Age, Herald Sun and The Wimmera Mail Times are always available.

Greg, (the owner along with his wife Judith) makes Fiery Bengal Chutney, Dukkah, Moroccan Style Dressing and other tasty bits and pieces. These products too grace the shelves and benches.

Some of the lunch offerings today include pumpkin soup and roll ($7.50); Shepherds Pie with salad ($10.50); Spinach, leek & fetta tart ($9.50); Madras Lamb Curry ($14.50); and vegetarian quiche and salad ($12.50). Pieces of hedgehog (a country staple) and totally wicked big thick choc-topped Anzacs are $3.00. All food is made on the premises or at home, and is fresh, tasty and attractively presented.

Excellent Monte coffee is served, and tea comes in elegant china cups.

And if you call in, tell ’em where you found ’em. They’ll appreciate it.

jus Scrumptious
Main St
Chalton

Chalton is a small township on the Calder Highway, in the north-eastern Wimmera. People passing though should plan a stop at this smart establishment. On entering, one is greeted with solid square tables and long-wearing blue carpet flecked in red and yellow. The colour scheme throughout is blue and cream and on hot summer days cavernous space takes on a welcoming, ever alluring prospect.

Cakes, sandwiches and focaccias feature on the menu and a highlight for us was the light fluffy scones, jam and cream. Coffee is workmanlike and a slight impost is charged for a double shot. Breakfast lasts till 10 a.m., lunch till 3. Cakes and slices are placed in little stands on the counter. All Melbourne daily papers are available for reading, a rare treat in the country. Against the exposed brick wall, one finds a stand of gourmet — sauces, Murray salt, dukkah. Big wide windows give a view across the road to the still-operating Rex Theatre.

A few chairs and tables occupy space on the pavement. Staff are restrained, friendly, professional. There is a feeling this place is valued by the locals, and on our last visit the air was filled with a mixture of American and Australian accents. Eight farming types gathered around a table, deep in discussion. Ah, the ever-varying happenings in the Victorian cafe scene.

And dear reader, as a coda, hearken to these lines of the great incomparable Nietzsche — ‘He who has come only in part to a freedom of reason cannot feel on earth otherwise than as a wanderer — though not as a traveller towards a final goal, for this does not exist. But he does want to observe, and keep his eyes open for everything that actually occurs in the world; therefore he must not attach his heart too firmly to any individual thing; there must be something wandering within him, which takes its joy in change and transitoriness.’

Stringers Stores
2-8 Ocean Beach Rd
Sorrento

Ambience: constituents. People who know their job. Timing. Friendliness. Music – or lack of it. Physical layout. Fellow imbibers. Views – exterior, interior. I’ve made three visits to this establishment and each time it’s been good.

I’m sitting alone at the bench facing the sea, regarding its pale blue surface through a fringe of Norfolk pines and musing upon Terry Eagleton’s words on Samuel Beckett. “… many of the features of his later prose and plays arise directly from his experience of radical uncertainty, disorientation, exile, hunger and need … What we see in his work is not some timeless condition humaine, but war-torn 20th century Europe. It is, as Adorno recognised, an art after Auschwitz, one which keeps faith in its austere minimalism and unremitting bleakness with silence, terror and non-being. His writing is as thin as is compatible with being barely perceptible … words flicker up for a fragile moment from a void into which they then fade back.”

High ceiling, cream decor. Good Mocapan coffee. Tart, fruit-cake, friands, cookies. Slices of tart and fruit-cake are a very reasonable $3. The caf is predominately a wine shop and I like the table arrangements – one abuts the end of a wine-rack, another sits in a nook, and a bench faces a stack of bottles of olive oil and jars of olives. There are chairs and tables outside on the pavement, and also a secretive little paved enclosure at the back. A quiet, relaxed yet attentive vibe comes through to me.

It’s January 30, 2007. Teachers are back at their posts, readying themselves for tomorrow’s invasion. Retired folk wander the street and peer into shop windows. Too many cars occupy parking lots.

A walk-down cellar holds older and more expensive wines. A visit here, well outside of the January holiday madness is recommended. Open every day.