Day Fifteen - Two Weeks Already!

Melbourne is a foodie's Valhalla, with gorgeous cafes and restaurants on every corner and down every tiny alleyway. They take breakfast and brunch particularly seriously, and recently DocCoffee almost had an anurism after his breakfast of coffee-glazed bacon and chive mascarpone nestled in fried bread with an egg on top. My chia and quinoa pudding with toasted nuts and goji-berries accompanied by home-made coconut yoghurt was equally delicious and far less heart-stopping. Yum!

Another thing they really know here is coffee, and we are already in training for the Melbourne International Coffee Expo on the weekend. Every single place has soy milk as an option (take that Cape Town) and often other milk substitutes too. Melbournians are all losing their minds for cold-drip at the moment, and I'll admit I had some on the weekend, without sugar, and it was pretty amazing (despite my misgivings that this is all some eloborate scheme to sell weird and expensive glass contraptions that look like school chemistry sets to the hipsters of the world.)

Something I really love, and wish more places back home did it, although some definitely did, is the automatic bottle of water and glasses that get placed on your table as soon as you arrive. So simple, and yet so much better than asking your waiter for a glass of water and getting everything else but. If it's going to be free, why not make it standard? Seems like a no-brainer.

They also don't do tipping here. I mean, you can tip if you feel the service was great or you really liked your meal, but it's not expected. So the waiters are paid to be there regardless of how many tables they serve or how good the service is they give. Which makes a surprising difference to the service in general. People shout out a greeting as you walk through the door, sidle up with menus and water as you sit down and always want to know if you enjoyed your coffee or food. And if you can't choose, they know what the best thing on the menu is, because they've tried it all themselves.

We've barely scratched the surface of all the cute places in our neighbourhood, and I can't wait to try them. We have all sorts of food here, from Thai to Italian, Sri Lankan, Japanese, French and Lebanese. And that's all within stumbling distance. So if you don't regularly see pics of me, it might be because I've turned into a butterball!

#MelbourneInternationalCoffeeExpo #Cafes #Restaurants #Tipping #Service #Foodies