Café: University Cafe
Date: 5 June
Time: 10 am
Location: 257 Lygon Street, Carlton
Drink ordered: Cappuccino and French toast
Price: $3.50
Coffee rating: 4 cups (bitter, creamy, perfect balance)
Service: Fake friendly and off-handish
Book: Sunday newspapers
What’s on the menu: Full café menu (eggs benedict look great, French Toast with pears is delicious)
Why go: A Sunday morning spot to watch and have a laugh at the young hipsters posing after a big Saturday night out (Sunglasses, scowls, upturned coats)
Observations:
Lygon Street is little Italy in Melbourne. On Saturday night the proprietors stand outside with menus in hand offering free bruschetta and wine if you’ll eat in their establishments.
At 10am on a Sunday it’s a different scene – still relatively quiet in the brisk, chilly and sunny morning. The cafes are half full. After a cursory look around I choose University café which despite being empty inside, seems warm and inviting. Many of the pavement tables are occupied – full of smokers or people with dogs.
I order a cappuccino and wait for a friend, Jonny, to arrive. A surly waitress leaves water on my table. I look up at her to see if she’ll smile or even nod a greeting. Nothing! She could have been filling pot plants in a greenhouse. (Cheer up love!)
My waiter, who is far friendlier, points out where the newspapers are and I pick up a copy of the Sunday Age and peruse the footy scores. The café is all wood interior. Jonny arrives, we order breakfast and spend a few hours eating and chatting over our food and coffees.
The coffee is excellent. Nice and bitter, hot, but not scalding and with a healthy dose of powdered chocolate on top.
Others talk around us, a few tables full up. Outside the posers eat, smoke and hold hands with their girlfriends. Fashionably unkempt, scruffy designer labels, expensive sunglasses. It seems like the perfect way to spend a Sunday morning.
