May 23, 2008

Places in Melbourne to get a perfectly reasonable cup of tea.

Endis Cafe in Brunswick street Fitzroy has a bag in a pot for $2.80. But for me their real charm lies in the lack of any Brunswick Street snobbery. It is posible to watch the passersby & the elaborate lengths they go to to distinguish themselves from their felllow man from a room full of Ambulance Drivers, Aboriginal Legal Service workers and Mothers & Daughters on shopping sprees.

The Three Thistles in Crowbasket Street in Brunswick. Probably my favourite cafe; not very posh, or cool, but reliable.

The Melbourne Museum cafe. Certainly a lot of children at the Museum, but a beautiful view, and a plunger of tea, and many items under glass to enjoy.

The Hopetoun Tearooms in The Block Arcade in the city is a place to take an impressionable neice. There is an air of conspicuous luxury likely to impress an 11 year-old, but the tea is overpriced and one is uncomfortably intimate with one's neighbours. And still only Duke of Earl and English Boringness. Oh, plus something they call 'Hopetoun Blend', which is presumably a mix of the tea left on the floor at the end of the day. It is not unusual for Auntie Frank to receive poor service wherever she goes so I won't say their service is apallingly slow on a saturday noontime. And if one sits in the window, morons will wander past and stare in at one, almost without ceasing...

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