I actually stumbled upon Patricia Coffee Brewers by accident - I came upon a large crowd of office workers standing around on the corner of Little William Street and Little Bourke Street, and had thought that they were taking part in a building evacuation exercise as part of a fire drill.
Then, I realised there’s a queue somewhere in there of people going into a little coffee serving counter. Patricia also offers a small selection of (pretty good) pastries to accompany the daily brews:
Seriously good coffee here - in a city which is very proud of its cafe culture and dead serious about its coffee, Patricia serves the best cuppa I’d had in Melbourne all week: full-bodied, aromatic.
In Australia I always say the best recommendation for a coffee place is a line. One of the few examples of the wisdom of crowds coming true. The office workers seem to have a bush telegraph that alerts people to where the good stuff is.
If you are around that was don’t miss Higher Ground for breakfast - good coffee but also very cutting edge breakfast dishes. A very lengthy line at weekends.
I did end up at Higher Ground one morning. Wanted to write about it here pretty soon - just a bit busy at the moment as I’m currently in Bangladesh, and we’re moving around most of the time in order to cover the UNESCO world heritage sites.
Higher Ground’s hotcake must be one of the most instagrammable food items in Melbourne (see pic below). Pity, tastewise, it doesn’t hold a candle to Bill Granger’s ricotta hotcake with honeycomb butter & bananas.
