Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 3
Welcome to part three of my Melbourne Coffee Crawl series. If you have came straight to this post, you might prefer to read parts one & two first. I found it really hard to compare the rest of these cafes to each other — they are all great! In fact, the two cafes that I am reviewing today are not far behind number one. So lets get the ball rolling and look at number…
#6 — First Pour (Veneziano)
26 Bond Street
Abbotsford
www.venezianocoffee.com.au/first-pour
First Pour started out just roasting and supplying coffee to other cafes. However, they have now set-up a small cafe next door and the coffee there is great. So good, in fact, that the flat white that I was served was probably the best flat white that I have ever tasted! It was a single origin of some Ugandan bean. So I’m definitely keeping my eye out on Beanbay for some beans from Uganda! Since the flat white was so good, I asked for a doppio ristretto of the same bean. I discovered the hard way that the Uganda works great in milk, but not as good by itself.
So if they made me the best flat white that I’ve ever tasted, why I am rating them at number 6? Well, First Pour isn’t really in the same league as most cafes — they don’t even sell food. It’s definitely not the kind of place that I would ask a “friend” (read hot-date) to meet me for coffee at. It just doesn’t have that kind of atmosphere.
What First Pour lacks in “normal cafe-ness” it makes up for in coffee nerdiness. They have a mini coffee roaster where you can roast-your-own beans; they have a number of domestic coffee machines on display; and best of all, they made awesome, awesome coffee. Also, the guys working there are friendly and, if they have time, are happy to talk about nerdy coffee stuff with you. One of the guys even wasted a couple of shots on us to give us a quick demo of how to pour tulip latte art. Oh, they also gave us a free shot each!
So this is definitely a must visit place if you are a coffee nerd! If you’re not, then it is a cool place to go for a coffee. Just don’t expect it to be a normal Aussie cafe 
Oh, and I should mention that David Makin works here — The runner up in the 2008 World Barista Championship! Need I say any more?
#5 — Brother Baba Budan
359 Little Bourke Street
Melbourne
Located only a couple of minutes walk from the Melbourne Mall, Brother Baba Budan is a cafe that you have no excuse not to visit when you are in the city (Hooray for double negatives!). We walked straight past it when trying to find our way there, so keep your eyes open! Also, make sure you look up when you get inside as the ceiling is covered in old chairs — It looks really cool!
So onto more important topics, let’s talk about the coffee? Well, they were offering two different blends: A house blend, and a blend of the day (Gypsy Blend). We tried both, and both were pretty good! Because we went there early on in our cafe crawl, I can’t remember much about the flavours, except that the blends tasted quite different to each other. They also roast their own coffee at their other store Seven Seeds (which will also feature in this countdown).
I’ll definitely be dropping back in there next time I’m in Melbourne, and I suggest you do the same!
If anything in this post has caught your attention, it’d be great to hear from you. So leave a comment below :-)
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First comment! Yay!
First Pour:
But yeah, makes sense cos it’s not the best atmosphere…did you find it really dim?
The first thing I remembered about this place after reading your review was having our coffees served to us in takeaway cups without being asked if we were planning on staying or not. Now I look back and think ‘We all spoke ENGLISH. Why don’t we ever make ourselves more clear?’ Just having a cross-cultural whinge day perhaps
Also, the cups made him lazy, therefore we got ‘boring hearts.’
Brother Baba Budan:
Chairs are awesome
We took my mum here, who we’re still training to say ‘flat white’ instead of ‘cappucino.’ It was our first coffee stop that trip. We didn’t walk past cos Stu had been peering thru windows in anticipation and noticed the Synesso.
Don’t remember it very well…might’ve had a headache…
Just wanted to say we’d been there
I believe Stu may comment as well, with something more useful. Or nerdy
Hey Humphrey,
My monday morning as usual brings about a pretty dull mood, but once I found out that the latest coffee crawl post was up I did a small fist pump into the air before hitting the Humph blog button from my firefox favourites.
Gotta say, things are starting to heat up in this list! (that is until you review an iced coffee… get it…)
Anyway, it’s interesting to find another CBD coffee place to get in the list. I’ve been living in Melbourne for a while, and its probably true that most clowns who come to Melbourne must think that all the best cafe’s etc are located in the CBD.
I hate finding anywhere to drink, or relax in the CBD. Most cafes are just cluttered, noisy and just not comfortable at all. Of course there are a few gems, like the places you’ve already mentioned – but my favourite cafes always seem to be buried in the suburbs.
So far you’ve been to Parkville, Richmond and Abbostford, I’m interested to see if you travelled any further from the fabled cbd, and if any of them made it into the top ten!
Also, you should check out this website – its more to do with Breakfast – but the cafes reviewed on this website is great – and my girlfriend likes to consult this before we “breakfast out” so to speak on weekends!
http://www.breakfastout.com.au/
Awesome Elly! Yeah, those chairs are pretty rad. I like how they have made art out of things that would normally be taken to the tip
Headache… ha ha 
Yeah, I think we walked past it because we (well I was at least) expecting a modern & large cafe, not sure small old-school themed place. I like the old-school-trash theme though. It’s rad!
Will: Hooray for monday mornings! I stayed home to try and get over this cold and watched too much top gear
Yeah, all of these cafes are pretty good. And they only get better from here on in.
I also agree about how hard it is to get good CBD coffee. I’ve got a theory though: Good location + good building (i.e. nice place near mall) would have high overheads such as rent. Therefore they would need to be VERY business minded and would have to make as much profit as possible. They would use cheaper beans, and care more about making money than good coffee.
On the other hand, many of the awesome cafe’s that are on (or will be on) this list are in really old buildings or warehouses and are in kinda not awesome locations. So they would have lower overheads, and can therefore spend more time focusing on the quality of coffee.
It’s just a theory, but yeah. And yes, we do venture future from the CBD than we already have. Hopefully not too long to wait – I’m already about 2/3rds done on the next post.
haha yeah that’s true.
I worked at a cafe on glenferrie road, and it was about a kilmetre up from the busy train station section (where safeways was a and everything else).
My boss said the rent was triple of the price, even though we were only a kilometre away! nuts.
Also if coffee shops are renting in rich places, even if they do make good coffee, it’ll be a rip off.
Hey when do we get part 5? I’m dying here!
Maybe you’re leaving it for a while because Stu has already jumped the gun on quite a good coffee post on the bulgaria post.
Glad to see you’re excited about the next blog post Will! It’s almost there. I just need to find a few more spare minutes to write about a cafe that is located just off glenferrie road. Then the next post will be published! When I started this blog, I mis-judged how long writing posts would take
Talking about glenferrie road, which cafe did you work in there?
Yeah, you’re probably right about rent effecting the price of coffee. What’s weird though, is that all the really good places don’t seem to charge more than about $3.50 for a brew. It always seems to be the mainstream/dodgy places that charge > $4.
I worked at Chapel Bakery Cafe. Our coffee was organic, it was ok I guess. Not the greatest.
So you’re writing about a cafe that’s just off glenferrie road?
I’m going to take a stab and say that it’s “Liar Liar” that you’re talking about!