Melbourne Coffee Crawl – Part 4
We are now coming to the business end of the coffee crawl — there are only four left! All the rest are really awesome, and there isn’t really big reasons why any of them are ranked higher than each other. It was really hard to order them on any objective scale, so they are ranked completely subjectly based on which I would choose to go to if distance wasn’t an issue. This post is part four in a series of posts, so you if you have come straight to this page, you might prefer to start reading part 1, 2, or 3.
#4 — Liar Liar
90 Kinkora Rd
Hawthorn
(View in Google Maps)
Coming in at number four is Liar Liar. This is a large, funky cafe with a modern decore, and a chilled atmosphere. It was a great place to just sit down, have a drink, and reflect on all of the cafes we had already gone to that day. Atmosphere wise, it reminded me of Elaia in Launceston (where I’m current sitting writing this post). We were also the only people there as we arrvied just before they closed. The upside of this was that they needed our help to polish off some cake!
The first thing that grabbed my attention about Liar Liar was the menu. Most cafes have a long and complicated menu of all the different formats of coffee: latte, flat white, short/long black, and so on. Not this place! Here the menu consisted of a number of different origins of coffee beans that you could choose from! If I was black, it would have been the perfect time to say, “That’s what I’m talking about!” However, since I’m a ranga, I kept my mouth shut and just took a photo of it.
I’m not going to go into detail about how good the coffee was here. The fact that I’ve ranking it in the top four should speak for itself. What I do want to talk about though is their Clover machine. If you have no idea what a Clover is, that’s ok, because neither did I until I came here. They are quite a complicated, big, and rare machine. The guy from Liar Liar said that his machine was one of five machines in Australia. Anyway, we got to go behind the counter and watch this thing in action. The coffee that it produced was like nothing that I’ve ever had before! It had the flavour of a lightly roasted fruity coffee, but the texture of tea. The one word I’d use to describe it would be “clean”.
So in short, this place is great! I’ll defintely be paying it another visit or two next time I’m in Melbourne. It’s well worth the few blocks walk from the nearest train station.
#3 — Seven Seeds
114 Berkeley St
Carlton
(Show in Google Maps)
Seven Seeds is in a weird location for a cafe, and if it wasn’t for the sign out front we wouldn’t haven’t picked there was a cafe here. Regardless of this, it was buzzing with life. It has only recently opened and they have done an awesome job of making an old warehouse look funky. For example, there are hooks on the wall for you to hang up your push bike and in another part they are using sheets of old piano player music as wallpaper. There is one word to describe the interior of this cafe — art. Even if you don’t like coffee, this place is worth checking out, even if you just have cake. Here’s a photo of their coffee machine that I’m “borrowing” from Dan’s Facebook.
Until I got here, I didn’t really feel like drinking another coffee. But once I was inside I couldn’t resist. We sat down so that we could look through into the coffee lab (yes, you heard me correctly) and roastery. If my memory serves me correctly, there were offering a choice of two blends. The coffee was so tasty here that I had to order a second, even thought I was already caffinated! As for the beans, these guys roast their own coffee on the premises and also supply their other cafe Brother Baba Budan
If you are there on a Saturday morning, you can join in on a public cupping session. I wish we had known about that. Unfortunately they didn’t want to give us a tour around the roaster, etc, but it was still great to chill out and soak in the atmosphere. It’s only a few block from the city, so defintely, defintely, defintely check this place out! Here what the front looks like from the roof of a Google branded car from back before it was Seven Seeds:
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Really? “Here’s what it looked like before it was Seven Seeds”?
Not sure how useful that is! (I remember being given directions to somewhere shortly after moving to Hagley: “Turn left where the fire station used to be.” Thanks guys, really helpful!)
Seriously though, really appreciate these reviews. I’ll be in melbourne next week (wednesday 9th-16th sep) so I’ll have to visit at least some of your recommendations.
Hanging out for #2 and #1!
Oh, and those new beans you gave me? Awe… wait for it… some!! Best brew I’ve made in a while.
haha.. yeah good point. Although, the reason I included it was because it doesn’t look much different now. Although, it might be grey? Hopefully I won’t be too much longer away with 1 & 2. I’ve already written about them, but I wanna do something funky with Google to make it work and do kinda like a summary thing.
Wow! I’m impressed that those beans are soo good. They are only about 30hours old
I might try them in a few days once they have ages slightly 
If I haven’t posted by Wednesday, I’ll let u know what 1 & 2 are so you can go there
Hey man. That was a good read!
Elly and I think we’ve worked out your top two now!
Haven’t been to either of these two, though – pretty keen to check out both, actually. Never had a syphon or a clover, but it looks like Liar Liar were offering a stunner (that Guatemalan was ~$20/kg green over at Ministry Grounds for a while…), so if that’s the kind of beans they’re offering I’m keen.
I can just imagine Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction sitting in Liar Liar sipping on a clover brew saying “Mmmm! Goddamn, Jimmie! This is some serious gourmet s***!”. See [this youtube clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-7f7vVCqvI) for more tips.
Hmm – it’ll probably tag my comment as spam now that I added a url… ahh well.
Catch you around,
Stu.
Ha ha, Stu. That’s funny cause I only just watched Pulp Fiction for the first time a couple of weeks ago
I was watching that thinking, “really, really, I bet it’s stale crap!”.
And, of cause you have worked out my top-two. Shouldn’t be that hard at all. Next time I’m definitely going to be taking more photos and more notes, so I can make a more objective judgement.
Well Seven Seeds has only recently opened, so I’d be surprised if you were there. Pretty much it’s amazing! I love how they have old ammo storage containers for holding cutleries, etc.
Yeah, the Clover was amazing. It was sooo clean! Although, the machine looked kinda impractical. I reckon it’d make a lot of mess.
The guy at Liar Liar definitely knows his coffee. He doesn’t roast his own, but he does tell them how he wants each of the origins roasted. I can respect that!
I think Liar Liar could have the potential to move up in rankings on my next coffee crawl!
Liar Liar is great.
But there is one setback though. You wake up, tired, hungover, want some breakfast – you know Liar Liar makes good coffee. Its saturday, you’ve been waiting all week to have a morning to yourself.
You go to liar liar, the place is full, you can’t get anywhere. It’s full of yuppies. Most of them have babies and are talking about what house they’re going to look at today. They all look at you as if you don’t belong. But why? Us youths deserve to have saturday morning too. So in the end you just have to get take away and escape with what is the best coffee in my ‘hood.
I’ll have to wait until I’m 30, have an infant, a blonde wife and at least 3 properties before I can eat breakfast there again!
Wow Will, that’s such a different experience than we had! Although, we were the only ones there, and got a complimentary demonstration of how to mop & close a cafe
There is nothing worse than not been able to get service. In fact, one of the big reasons that I have ranked no 1 & 2 so highly is because we went to both when they were really busy, but the service was still as slick as it could be!
So what’s the ideal time to go to Liar Liar? When they’re not busy I’m guessing?