Why go: Sit on a stool at the window and look out at the old Victorian buildings across the street, people passing by below and sigh and take it all in

Observations: This cafe is located in a little art-deco masterpiece, a narrow black tiled building with a mast like a ship at the top. The café is up short flight of stairs with a row of stools to sit on at the window.

When I get my coffee from the very sweet friendly and warm guy behind the counter – you get the feeling he is genuinely interested in wishing you a good day – and take a seat its possible to really relax, look out across at the two brown-grey ornate Victorian buildings across the street, one of which is called the Lombard Building.

With Melbourne’s yellow cabs driving past and seated in the boxy little art deco coffee bar my mind drifts back to a little coffee bar I visited in Manhattan last year in the middle of winter. It was also a pokey place with the ornaments made out of recycled paper and a funky feel.

I could spend the whole morning in this cozy place.

Outside the café there is a blue plaque with details about the building which dates back to the jazzy 1930s. Imagine having a coffee here back then!

Café: Aranti Cafe
Date: 23 June
Time: 8am
Location: 100 Flinders Lane
Drink ordered: A cappucino
Price: $3.50
Coffee rating: 2,5 cups (high quality dark chocolate on top, bitter, perfect temperature, but the milk was almost sour)
Service: Pleasant and friendly
Book: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
What’s on the menu: Huge big café with breakfasts and lunches. A sign says $10.50 hot lunch and wine special

Why go: For the cozy seclusion and to feel as if you are stuck in the evening for ever

Observations: At $3.50 for a drink-in cappuccino, this is the most expensive coffee shop on the Street.

It’s at the back end of 333 Collins Street, a neo-art deco building, very grand. I guess the café serves the big wigs that work in the building, hence the price. Mind you the coffee is good (well almost) and the big space cozy. The windows are tinted so it feels like it’s the evening when its actually 8am in the morning.

I order and the lady behind the till with a thick European or South American accent asks me if I would like something to eat as well, her eyes looking down at a display of tempting muffins and banana bread. I resist.

I take a seat at a table, sitting in the beige leather bench that runs the length of the half the wall. A queue of people forms all dressed like they are going to a funeral – either black coats or black suits. This is a place for business breakfasts and deal making!

I read and feel quite content. The coffee is served with a rich helping of dark chocolate sprinkled on top. It tastes good at first but then I seem to taste something sour – is the milk off? I finish it anyway.

Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna – about a boy working in the house of Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera when Trotsky comes to stay. I have visited the very house in Mexico City and long to be back in that colourful, wonderful city.

According to Kingsolver (well one of her characters), there are three phases of your life
- your childhood
- your children’s childhood
- and then old age…

Having no kids yet, I must be young!

Why go: for the kosher bagels and challah of course!

Observations: I have walked past this café above Flinders lane on my way to work almost every morning for the last 2 months.

The name made me think of a Jewish bakery, and while I am not sure if it is kosher, when I climb the stairs and head inside I see it advertises Jewish events in Melbourne.
Inside its like stepping into a kosher bakery from Yeoville, Johannesburg, during the days when it was the Jewish ghetto of the city. Now sadly no more.

Still back to Glicks, which is an old building with wooden floors and high ceilings, glass cabinets full of israeli salads and fresh breads behind. There are challahs freshly baked for the Sabbath and bagels of course.

I order a cappuccino and take a seat on a stool by the window. From here I can watch over Flinders Lane and across to the grand neo-Art Deco 333 Collins street with its brass lamps and grand steps. It’s great having this birds eye view while watching people drag themselves to work in the cold. I could definitely spend a few hours reading here.

The bagel I buy on the way out – a treat for later.

Why go: Just outside of Canberra in sheep country, very quaint high street to browse after enjoying your cuppa

Observations: Gunning, population 1,000 is smack bang in the middle of sheep country. We stopped here on our drive from Melbourne to Sydney. The café is on the main road, lined with old Victorian brick buildings – a courthouse, picture house converted into a bookshop, two cafes and a few antique stores. Lots of sheep imagery and a lazy feel.

The café has a display of shears on the wall, a wood beam ceiling and slow service. The coffee is good and you can browse the overpriced books near the entrance. The food looked good. My sandwich was on wholegrain type bread and worth the wait. Everything is quite expensive, not one of those backward country towns, but an upmarket place with organic products on the shelf and lots of hand made soap (etc).

As I sat eating my sandwich and drinking my coffee I thought, what the hell would you do with your days here? Probably read a lot of books (the little shop has a good selection) and sit at a café and watch the passing parade of bikies and tourists.

Why go: To say you went to a cool, trendy café and stood outside waiting for a table like a douche bag

Observations: Three Bags Full is one of those cafes that the “cool” people go to, very trendy and hip and in a converted old Victorian warehouse to boot. That being said it has some nice design features (lamps hanging at the coffee bar made out of up turned cups and sauces the highlight).

We arrived relatively early, but the place was already packed with the trend setters, who looked up from their Herald Suns and looked us up and down. Luckily we did not have to queue outside like the other late arrivals, where you have to wear this silly, disinterested, yet chilled expression on your face while you fiddle with your iphone and try to look uber cool.

We sat at a communal table and got a very haughty look from the occupants at one end. I gave a haughty ‘in your face’ look back and we settled into our old steel factory chairs. I choose the big breakfast at around $18. I thought it was a bit much, but everything on the menu is over $15 so it seemed the best value. The food was OK, nothing exceptional, a bit bland to be honest, though the company was great (good friends). Everyone enjoyed their meals. I wish I’d tried the eggs with mushy peas which looked good.

Paraphrasing Woody Allen, it was a good place to spend a few hours chatting and eating breakfast, but not a great one (and then someone super-cool punched me in the mouth!) – if you don’t get the joke, listen to Woody Allen’s stand-up CD. Pure genius

On the subject of genius, you could do better than spending your hard earned cash at this pretentious place, but you could also do a lot worse. Depends on how cool you wanna be!

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.

Why go: Quiet and out of the way, down a beautiful old lane. Sit at the counter and see how many of the film represented by movie posters on the wall you have seen.

Observations: This café is warm and cozy, the walls lined with framed movie posters, many classics and lots of great foreign movies. The café is a little oasis of calm, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Melbourne. You reach it down a lane of old stone buildings and it feels like you’ve stepped back into Victorian times. This feeling is only enhanced by the view of the tram stop across the road where many of the old, turn of the century purple and gold banded circle trams stop as part of their free loop around the city. You can also cast your eye across at the Melbourne aquarium, voted one of the ugliest buildings in Melbourne recently.

I take a seat at the counter and look out across the street. The coffee arrives and slice of cake, no fork, just dropped on a plate. Luckily the coffee makes up for the stale, tasteless slice of carrot cake – it’s rich and delicious. I can hear what sounds like either Italian or Spanish being spoken behind the counter and the coffee is as good as any I’ve had in Europe.

Across from me is a painting of Tretchikoff’s painted green lady – you’d know the painting if you saw it, very famous. She is a graceful Asian lady with a green face and swept almost polished hair.

I look out at the steady stream of people walking down Flinders Street. Across the road are Asian tourists waiting for the tram. I perform a small social experiment – I stare at the people as they approach my window and see if they notice me looking at them. They all do and I quickly draw my gaze away.

People look in at windows that look out at them!

Observations: I’m served by a young ‘side-show Bob’ type character, tall with frizzy hair and just slightly demonic. Dressed in jeans, t-shirt and a black and white chequered scarf wrapped around his neck (can someone explain that one to me?) he looks bored and disinterested, vaguely snarling as I place my order. He’s the type of guy who makes you feel guilty about changing your order – in this case from a cappuccino to a cappuccino and blueberry muffin.

The café has floor to ceiling windows looking out across the intersection of Flinders Lane and Market Street. Diagonally across is the imposing, bulky, grey Port Authority Building. Old and rather ugly. I look up and can see tram, train and bus all at the same time. Trivial I know, but kind of cool in a “I need to get out more” kind of way.

The cafe is raised above the street by a few feet so you have a good vantage point to watch people go by. I spy four work colleagues dashing across the road before the rain hurtles down and forms streams in the gutters. Umbrellas pop up antennae.

I’ve moved on from Tony Blair to Charles Dickens. Re-reading ‘Great Expectations’. The last time I read it was at university many moons ago. I find myself marvelling at the inventive language and laughing at Dickens ability to caricature and at the same time accurately describe some of the characters with just a few choice sentences.

Pip (Dickens) describing one of the Xmas lunch guests: “I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered stooping old man, of sawdusty fragrance with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.”

Behind me two men are discussing business in the language of low-life gangsters. Words like “blue arse fly” and “fuck head” drift across the table. The rain stops as suddenly as it began and the sky lightens.

While we’re (Larna and I) having our coffees the place is buzzing with a lot of banking people mingling Yellow ties and blue pinstripe suits are the predominant fashion.

Then at 9am almost as if someone has blown a whistle, the place clears out (including Larna who heads upstairs) and I’m left on my own in a virtually empty shop. A strange experience!

As for the café itself it’s modern and spacious with some funky red leather sofas with stylishly faded arms.

Café: Bellino
Date: 22 May
Time: 1pm
Location: 281 Victoria Street, Brunsick
Drink ordered: Cappuccino
Price: $3.00
Coffee rating: 4 cups (They’re Italian, they know how to make coffee)
Service: Very friendly
Book: Tony Blair: A journey
What’s in a name?: Bellino is a municipality in the Province of Cuneo in the Italian region Piedmont, population 165. It also means “Pretty nice” in Italian.
What’s on the menu: Pizzas, foccacias, breakfasts, soups

Why go: Start here with a cozy coffee and a bite to eat and then head left and hit the discount shops and funky boutiques of multi-cultural Sydney Road.

Observations: The guy who serves us is a good likeness for George Calombaris, one of the judges on Masterchef Australia. Very warm and friendly. We order coffees and look at the menu – I got for a four seasons pizza and a cappuccino.

The café itself is divided into three sections – an outdoor area under a canopy (not very busy today due to the rain), a front section looking out onto Victoria road and a long narrow section at the back. There’s a wooden curving bar at the front, and interesting old photographs and posters on the wall – a copy of Toulouse Lautrec poster of prostitutes in a Parisian bar and a poster of a painting of a clown. It has rustic charm and has a warm and inviting feel.

A lot of regulars come here. A couple of oldies seem to be known to our waiter who gives them a hug and calls them by their first name. The old gent is dressed in a dapper dinner jacket, pants and leather shoes, very old school European.

The food arrives, my pizza is thin-crust and delicious (and big! I can’t finish). Everyone else enjoys their meals – eggs Benedict, omelette Provencale and a roast capsicum, zucchini, broccoli and fresh asparagus foccacia.

Our waiter “George” says “awesome” in response to just about anything you say – how good is that!

Other reviews: Urbanspoon,foodgod