Live in Centre Place Lane – Melbourne
Daily Photo – Centre Place Lane in Melbourne
I left the market and caught a tram into the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. After a short journey I alighted at a stop that read “Bourke Street Mall” and walked a block or two until I found myself outside St Paul’s Cathedral on what was called Swanson Street.
It was then that I suddenly realized I was rather hungry and so went looking for a place to eat – a job that you might expect to be relatively easy in a place widely considered the culinary capital of Australia. But that’s the thing about Melbourne: the city wants you to eat out as soon as you get there, launching an assault on your senses that only the very strongest of wills can resist. This is due in no small part to the fact that the city is home to more than 3,500 restaurants and cafes serving cuisines from over 70 different countries. Take Lygon Street in Carlton as an example; this “Little Italy” precinct boasts approximately 100 restaurants, cafes, and bars alone – and that’s just one street.
Consequently, choosing a place to eat becomes insanely difficult, mainly owing to the fact that there are so many options. Give me a choice between seafood and Italian and I can usually manage, add Indian, Chinese, Greek and a range of Lebanese and Asian influences to the mix and things start to get complicated. But multiply those choices by a thousand and you have a situation that is frankly alarming.
Walk down any central Melbourne street and you’ll find long queues to establishments that are now city institutions. But that doesn’t matter because you can always duck down an alleyway or side street and find a cafe that is impossibly small and roughly the same size as your living room, squeezed between two equally small eateries that nevertheless welcome you like a long lost friend, which is what I did now.
From Swanson Street I turned into Flinders Lane and then again into a small alleyway not more than 2 metres wide and 50 metres long called Centre Place.
Centre Place was transformed from a neglected service alley into a revitalised laneway by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government in the 1980s, and they’ve done it exceedingly well. The lane can’t be more than 2 metres wide and 50 metres long, yet it holds upwards of 20 small scale cafes, sushi bars and eateries and is as much a tourist destination as it is a venue, and choosing a place to eat can be quite an overwhelming task. Fortunately the task is made easier by a series of maître d’s eagerly enticing you in.
I was on my second lap down the lane when I must have said out loud “ooh Eggs Benedict” as no sooner had the words left my mouth than a pretty young waitress dressed all in black and clothing that left little to the imagination stepped forward and pointed out they also do a New York version featuring a beef brisket. Well, before I knew what was happening I was seated, had ordered and a glass of coke was being placed in front of me by a young man in equally tight clothing and a multitude of piercings that frankly looked like they’d be both painful and annoying. From my vantage point at a table that was placed where a window once sat, I watched the comings and goings of a busy lane in the heart of Melbourne. It really was quite fascinating to watch the people drift by, and for a cafe that couldn’t have been more than 5 metres wide and 10 metres deep, the food was exceedingly good.
Satisfied and full, I paid by waving my phone at a machine on the counter, a neat trick I’d recently been taught by both my wife and daughter a few nights earlier, and stepped out into the throng of foot traffic to consider my next options.
