Las Chicas Cafe

LAS CHICAS CAFÉ (203 Carlisle Street Balaclava)



The owners of Las Chicas are very well known within the St. Kilda Café industry, as they were involved with such cafes as Leroy’s Espresso, and Espresso Bar on Acland Street, and the Galleon Café on Carlisle Street. This corner café runs alongside the ramp to Balaclava Train Station, and is planning to renovate it’s courtyard, and have recently secured the lease for the neighbouring property, which has a lot of potential. Las Chicas is not a family oriented café, it caters more for a young adults market. The menu is quite extensive given the small kitchen space.

The coffee used at Las Chicas is ‘Di Bella’ and is a Queensland based company. This coffee is also used at the Galleon Café and was used at Espresso Bar. I ordered my caffe latte and it had a beautiful looking heart on top. I believe this was to distract me from the actual taste of the coffee. The word that perfectly describes it is sour. I was unsure whether the problem was with the blend, or how it was extracted, so I ordered an espresso and watched it pour. The crema looked good, if anything it poured a little fast (ie. 20ish seconds), and it tasted awful once again. This tells me that either the machine was not clean, or the blend is just not made for my tastebuds. Regardless of this fact, this is one of the busiest cafes on the whole Carlisle Street strip, and when competing against well-known cafes like ‘The Wall 280’, they’re doing pretty well to have captured some of the coffee market in the area. I find that people in the St. Kilda area are as much about being seen at a well-known café as they are about drinking good coffee.

No beans…

St Jerome’s Caledonian Lane, Melbourne CBD. Australia

I occasionally discover a gem, and today is one of those days I’m happy to say. Jerome’s is tucked away inconspicuously in Caledonian Lane, next to Myers off Lonsdale near the Swanson St Corner.

The coffee was acceptable, without putting too fine a point on it. For me it was the hippy/funkiness of the place, and was it not for my blatant disregard for generational segregation instruments (eg: henna tattoos, piecing, and dreads) I would perhaps have been less than inclined to enter. But, I am of course oblivious to these things and in I went. I was greeted with the obligatory “Indian woman loaning on a tree’ print from the 70’s. Where have all these gone, as every Greek house I visited had one or two. There were tiny booths, other 70’s art, and a smattering of food offerings that had to be investigated.

I really liked the place, regardless of the fact that my of sider & I must have looked out of place in our suits (at least I wore jeans).

Worth a visit, and 1 bean for style.

GROCERY BAR (East Melbourne – Tribeca complex)

This sleek looking café/eatery can be seen from Victoria Parade, with its bright red ‘italcaffe’ umbrellas out the front. This cleanly designed space has a steady hum and flow about it, with a mass of apartments just an elevator’s ride away. With outdoor and indoor seating including bar stool seating, table seating and a large amount of general space, this café caters for all ages from bubbas to nannas. You might even catch the owner’s and/or the head chef’s kiddies running around. It has been in operation now for around 12 months and stays true to its landmark ancestral café on Fitzroy Street in St. Kilda also trading as Grocery Bar. The all-important coffee looks good to start with. The milk texturing is good and at a good temperature, the espresso is poured at a good rate and if they have time, the baristas will even perform some type of ‘latte art’, generally with a skewer. After all this, the bean can’t live up to the expectations. The coffee used is roasted in Italy, and then shipped to Australia. It doesn’t matter how the coffee is stored, it’s not going to be the same after this mammoth journey across the seas. Funnily enough it has a lack of flavour and complexity on the palate. I would suggest a double ristretto base (i.e. 30ml from a double dose of coffee) for anyone who actually wants a caffeine hit. Grocery Bar has a no frills menu which is reasonably priced for the area, including such essentials as pides, wraps, build your own breakfasts and a daily changing specials board offering soups, shepherds pies and other not-so-extravagant dishes. This café is definitely worth a try if you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t make it my first coffee of the day. No beans given…