MELBOURNE CAKAGE!

Okay, so I can't remember where exactly I took all these pics (maybe because I only took pics of the cake displays and didn't eat any, but I could almost feel my sugar levels rising from just looking at them..) So here's a taste of what Melbourne has to offer in the cake department!

I must say thought that in some places the reason why they looked so impressive was because of quantity not quality LOL 

Cafe Andiamo, Melbourne

Cafe Andiamo

36 Degraves St

Melbourne VIC 3000

The day after the amazing meal at cafe no 5 we went back to Centre Place/Degraves St (they're practically the same place) and spent a good 10min deciding on which cafe we should try. We eventually settled on Andiamo because it wasn't squashy,dark,dirty or loud (all of which my mum hates!). 

The prices here weren't as cheap as they were at the day before but they were still cheaper than what you;d findd in Sydney. We got our usual hot beverages - me = chai latte, mum = cap.

Chai Latte

The usual sprinking of cinnamon on the top is absent (something I only just noticed when posting the pic up) but I vaguely remember seeing heaps of it at the bottom of my glass. This one was pretty sweet, perfect for those with a sweet tooth but I still had the memory of yesterday's chai latte so I thought that one was a bit too sweet...

Cap

Mum declared this one better than Sydney but it still lost to cafe no 5 LOL

Toast w/ Jam

Big Breakfast (includes THREE eggs, grilled tomato and mushrooms, a mountain of toast, a hash brown and bacon)

We opted to get one big breakfast and just the toast to share between the two of us. Even so, the two of us stuffed ourselves silly and were just plain glad we decided to share everything. I'm not really a bacon person but my mum says the bacon was pretty good, not tooooo salty. The eggs were set, not the runny type that I preferred with toast but ZI don't mind eggs that are just set either so everything was cool. The grilled tomato and mushrooms were my favourite part of the meal and the toast was actually really fresh damper bread smothered in yummy yummy butter hehehhe

This was a really really good meal and we both left as very happy (and full) chappies before wandering around to continue our exploration of melbourne =]

I forgot which laneway this was...but yeah you find the coolest things in the weirdest places in Melb.

And here's the popular shoes-haning-on-powerlines shot

Laurent, Melbourne

We went to Laurent on our last day in Melbourne (hahaha my Melbourne posts aren't in Chronological order, they're in the order off how memorable they were =]). Laurent was definitely a great way to end our trip and although it was expensive (maybe not if you're used to the prices at Lindt, Guylian etc cafes) but I thought it was worth every dollar. As you can see the exterior is amazing - as expected of Melbourne (we went to the Laurent on Little Collins St) and it had an interior to match too! 

Their cake display was AMAZING! Way better than the Lindt, Guylian etc cake displays in Sydney (or maybe I'm being bias.. I can't tell) but unfortunately when I asked if I could take a pic of the cake display I was denied =[ =[ So I didn't get to take a pic of the cake display nor did I take one of the interior. But I did take a quick snap of our cakes because they were so lovely.

Millefeuille (french for 'thousand leaves' according to wiki)

The Millefeuille (a.k.a. vanilla slice, custard slice, napoleon etc) is one of my mum's fav cakes, not so much mines as it easy to get ones where the pastry is cardboard-like and not-very-fresh-tasting. This one was great though, as expected. The pastry was light and crispy and the custard wasn't the yucky excessively sweet plastic type things. Yep, the more you pay, the better the quality.

Christine (brownie biscuit, valrhona milk, chocolate mousse, cream)

I had the Christine (also available as a whole cake in various sizes) which is their signature cake. This reminded me of Guylian's 100% Pure Pleasure in both taste and texture. The top part of the Christine was actually soft, not hard despite its looks which was the same for the 100% Pure Pleasure and it too also had a varying layer of choc thing going too. It was really sweet, maybe more so for me as we'd eaten a lot before this...but I still finished everything and tried to scrape every last bit of choc of the plate!

We also shared an earl grey tea (which I didn't take a pic of), it was served in very pretty black china and was one of the most fragrant earl greys I've tried. The serving was pretty big too so we were lucky to have shared it. We left very satisfied and headed towards union lane for one last look at Melbourne's famous grafitti.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Laurent is actually available in Sydney too! There's one at the Bondi Junction Westfield (not that I've noticed it around) and one at Manly. I'll be sure to try and find the Bondi Junction one when uni starts hehehe

Gelato in Melbourne

Gelato in Melbourne is unofficially waaaaay better than it is in Sydney! Reasons?

1.It's everywhere

2.It's cheaper

3.There's more flavours to choose from

4. The smallest size there is TWO SCOOPS!

5. Each scoop is BIGGER than what they give you in Syd

Yep, Melbourne is the place to be for gelato =]

I can't profess to have had a lot of gelato in Melbourne, only enough to whet my appetite and feel like I didn't eat my worth of it because the only way I could have done that was by eating gelato for breakfast lunch and tea hehehehe

Here's a list of the places I did try:

Movenpick (yes, I know we have that in Syd too but I've never tried Movenpick before and we just happened to go past it =])

Fritz Gelato (THE BEST GELATO I'VE EVER HAD)

Trampoline (It's like an ice cream franchise that we don't have in Syd)

Timis Gelateria

 

The Movenpick one was disappointing. ONE SCOOP for $5!!! All the other places were under $5 for TWO SCOOPS and tasted way better. It didn't even look appealing so I won't bother with it. Sigh* I had great expectations for Movenpick =[

 

Panacotta & raspberry + Natural yoghurt

The Fritz Gelato one is BLISS! Fritz Gelato is AWARD WINNING ORGANIC gelato!! I tried the panacotta & raspberry flavour and the natural yoghurt one. Both were excellent, tasting fresh and like the real thing, you could really taste that there wasn't any artificial stuff in it =] The panacotta & raspberry one was sweet but not too sweet nor did it taste artifical. I thought the balance between the panacotta and the raspberry was excellent.

Click here to find out more about Fritz Gelato. I went to the one at the Prahran Markets and I must say, Melbourne does markets waaay better than Sydney. Everything is so orderly and civilised (and fairly clean) yet there's still the hustle and bustle you'd expect at the markets. Fritz Gelato also does organic doughnuts and coffee but I didn't get a chance to try those.

 

lemon, lime andd bitters (pink) & kiwi (yellow)

Trampoline had some really interesting flavours, for an example of their whacky flavours click here. I tried there lemon, lime and bitters one and kiwi. The lemon, lime and bitters was actually quite disappointing. It had the fizzy soft drink thing going but that was about it. It was sort of acidic in a bad way and tasted a bit like cheao lemonade...the kiwi one was okay but nothing spectacular. It just tasted like all the other kiwi flavoured icecream I'd tried before. Seriously...all the kiwi icecream I've had has all tasted the same... Despite what I say this was still waaay better than the Movenpick one and still pretty cool (mainly because we don't have it in Syd =P)

 

view of the Trampoline gelato store from the outside seating

Timis Gelateria was somewhere on Brunswick St. It saved my day coz I'd had a bad day that day. I wanted to go to this Bakery that was aparently really popular but the Bakery turned out to be a Bakery cafe and not a bakery bakery that my mum had in mind. She chucked a spazz and refused to eat there coz it was really crowded and complained about not being able to eat chinese food LOL I gave in and we looked around but there wasn't much to choose from. Eventually we settled on this Vietnamese place called VietRose and it was THE WORST meal we had in Melbourne. We wanted pho and we ordered the “Vietnamese rice noodles with beef” which came out as something completely different to what we had in mind. Rice noodles? Yep. Beef? Nup, they gave us pork. Was it Pho? Nup. It was what my mum called “sugary water with rice noodles and western veggies” and yep, that pretty much summed it up. Yep, and you know what? At the end of the meal I found an insect in mines T_T 

this is "two scoops" the top is vanilla, bottom is melon

Uhuh, that just killed our day. So anyway then we go past Timis and I get my mum to let me eat gelato =] She went along with me only because she wanted to drink soft drink ==” yep, my mum can be as childish as me sometimes hehehe I get her a fanta then she starts winging that it's in a can and not in those glass bottles like the counter display (I just rolled my eyes sigh*) I got vanilla flavour thinking my mum would like it but she didn't because I also got melon flavour and the scoop I gave her had a bit of both in it * rolls eyes again* LOL but I enjoyed the gelato and that’s all that mattered. =] Both were pretty decent but the vanilla one was the winner, made from real vanilla beans.

Well that's my gelato experiences in Melbourne. =] The closest thing in Sydney I've come across was the gelato at Bravo in Crows Nest. Got any cool gelato/ice cream haunts of your own? Please do share =]

Cafe No 5, Melbourne

Cafe No 5

5 Centre Place

Melbourne, VIC 3000

This was - no argument -  the best cafe we'd been to during our trip to Melbourne. The food was a decent proportion, nothing fancy - just a really good hearty meal. It was also the first coffee my mum had in Melbourne and she declared it excellent, something she's NEVER done in Sydney. I'm no judge as I don't drink coffee but my mum apparently makes a really good coffee and she's never complimented a single place in Sydney for their coffee (got any suggestions anyone?). But she loved the cappuccino here and I was really surprised to hear her mentioning the coffee from this place even after we got back to Syd and she's NEVER recalled a single good coffee experience (except for her own).

My chai latte & mum's cap in the background

My chai latte was also excellent! I remember my first exp with chai latte...hehehe It was at uni last year, i was told that it was coffee and I was really surprised that it smelled and tasted nothing like it, shocked that it was actually suggary and that the lovely aroma of cinnamon greeted me. It was a SUPER SUGGARY EXPERIENCE and it changed my views about coffee, only to go home, google it, and find out that it was actually tea! LOL Then I've got some memories of the really watery and weak chai lattes, the ones that don't have enough cinnamon nor the suggary hit that I'd experienced the first time. All the chai lattes I've had are either really suggary or just plain weak. But this one was perfect. Not watery, enough froth at the top, a decent amount of cinnamon, but most importantly it wasn't too sweet nor too bland! 

BRAT (Bacon, rocket, avocado & tomato) Panini

Chicken Schnitzel Panini

I must say their menu isn't really extensive but they don't need one! We each ordered a panini and swapped a half each. I know my photography skills are really bad and it doesn't look like much in the pics but trust me when I say they were great! I'm not a great fan of rocket so I liked the chicken schnitzel one better but the BRAT panini would definitely be a more veg-balanced option. 

The decor was really cool here and it had a really cozy, local kind of feel to it. The walls were lined with loads of awesome stuff: pics drawn by local artists, posters and cards about all different local music events and that cool clock with their shop name on it =] The only one thing that made us worry at first was that there were no prices on the walls (no menus here) and we were crossing our fingers that it wouldn't be expensive after we'd ordered. But after their good coffee and good food we weren't too fussed about the price. It turned out to be really cheap though, $18 for the two of us! Now where could you get that in Sydney?