Review: Melbourne Cafe Culture Walking Tour
Top Oz Tours offers a great range of Melbourne tours and experiences. You can book this tour here.
With close to a thousand cafes operating in central Melbourne, deciding where to get your morning brew is a daunting task — particularly for visitors.
Hidden Secrets Tours solves that problem with their engaging Melbourne Cafe Culture Walking Tour. It takes guests to several of the city’s most innovative coffee houses and includes a cafe lunch in the price.
The tour starts in front of the Hill of Content Bookshop on Bourke Street, which opened back in 1922. We learn from our guide Caity that the city’s coffee culture began to develop even earlier. You may be surprised to hear that Melburnians started getting their caffeine groove on as far back as the 1860s, following an influx of Italian migration sparked by the Gold Rush. The Italians arrived with a love of coffee and spent years attempting to convince the predominantly tea-loving public to give it a try.
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By the 1960s, traditional Italian cafes like Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar were flourishing. Back then it was all about making an espresso for the customer to throw back, before quickly moving on. Today of course, cafe patrons like to linger!
Caity leads up through the city’s network of laneways to Ridgeway Place — near the architecturally stunning Monaco consular building. Our first stop is Liaison Cafe, which has a hip feel and plenty of contemporary artwork on the walls. The coffee is superb and we get to indulge in a French-style canele, with a crisp exterior and creamy centre. Editor’s note: Liaison Cafe has recently closed.
From the 1980s cafes started to become more than just a place to grab a coffee. Many began to offer light meals and sweet treats. Renowned Melbourne chocolatier and coffee house Koko Black has certainly carried that tradition forward. We call in to sample their exquisite Java truffle — a creamy coffee and cognac-flavoured centre, surrounded by dark chocolate. Heaven!
Somehow Caity coordinates it so we all board the same tram for a ride down Collins Street. We end up at Patricia Coffee Brewers — a popular cafe offering a smartly curated selection of baked goods. The space is impressive for its architectural features, including the black and white mosaic floor.
Patricia only serves three styles of coffee — black, white, and filtered. After sampling the amazing filtered brew, we’re all ready for another sugar hit. Caity leads us to La Belle Miette patisserie, and we each make a selection from their display case of enticing macarons.
There’s one last stop on this Melbourne cafe culture walking tour — Captains of Industry — which you enter off Somerset Place. Up the stairs we go and into a space full of natural light from large windows overlooking busy Elizabeth Street.
The space is shared between a café, barber, leather goods maker, and jeweller, and feels like a throw-back to the industrial revolution blended with a splash of The Great Gatsby. This is our lunch venue, and the food and coffee are excellent in equal measure. It’s certainly been a day of caffeine-fueled surprises, and for me, this is possibly the best one yet!
The writer travelled as a guest of Hidden Secrets Tours. You can book this tour here.
Browse our full range of Melbourne tours and experiences here. We offer a Best Price Guarantee.
Additional images: Bigstock
About the writer
Gayann Walker is a Perth-based freelance writer with a passion for travel, adventure, and a good feed. Born in Boston, Gayann has lived in Perth since moving from the Gulf Coast of Florida in 2010. She has an eclectic travel style that varies from rugged adventures (such as climbing Mt Kinabalu and roughing it in the jungles of Borneo) to relaxing on beautiful beaches and sipping cocktails. Gayann has travelled extensively through Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
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