The Essential Ingredient
I'll be straight with you - I've never actually been to this place. My idea of gourmet shopping is a strong latte, or at best a skerrick of parmesan from the Vic Market. This is not because of any sort of reverse snobbishness, but purely because it costs money and that's what I use for train tickets.
CIBI
It doesn't matter that CIBI is at the sneaker-warehouse end of Smith Street, or that it's hidden in a backstreet between overgrown houses and factories. This spacious café/design-nerd paradise could be poking out from any industrial suburb and it'd still be poking out with pride.
CIBI is a big space, split into two areas.
Koko Black
Upon first entering the sleek-looking Koko Black, I feel my head twitch, my heart skip a beat, and my toes fidget in a wave of curiosity. Although the store has the look of a Starbucks that's been mutated into a bank, the atmosphere is more than delightful while the staff, namely the J man, are simply wonderful.
Hot cross buns
With tedious predictability, every year I exclaim, ‘I wish you could get hot cross buns the whole year round’, and then realise that they just wouldn’t be as good then would they.
This Easter, Daniel Chirico of Baker d Chirico who we interviewed in our last issue, is doing buns with a decadent dark chocolate cross.
Candy Cube
It’s fluro-white and smack in the middle of China Town, but there’s something about Candy Cube that recalls the childhood dash down to the local Milk Bar for a 50c bag of mixed lollies (and the occasional Big Boss).
It could be all the candy. The juicy assortment of fruit salad, sour colas, raspberries, milk bottles and fizzers mean that here eyes are frequently bigger than stomachs.
The Organic Food and Wine Deli
Now don’t call us pansies, but ThreeThousand occasionally enjoys a organic-gluten-and-sugar-free-apple-bran muffin.
The Organic Food and Wine Deli (TOFWD) is Degrave’s answer to the Vic Market’s organic section, but smaller. After seven years in operation last week the store took on a whole new face (and acronym), but thankfully its insides have remained the same.
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