Penultimate

On December 30th, you're between years. It's the lame duck period. Too early to fantasise about a new future, to late to avoid the fact that last NYE's future hasn't happened yet.

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Unexplored

Up a dead end side street that in 15 years I've never walked in previously is this - courtesy of a wet Boxing Day interlude and a Xmas phone - discreet and yet imposing entrance. It's the only door in 30 metres of identical brick wall. Opposite are a bakers' supplies depot, an electrician's workshop, a taxi depot and something that purports to be a gallery over a derelict garage. At the cul of the sac are two logistics depots, which along with furniture and car repair make up the majority of the local industry.

It's possible, due to the absence of people on a public holiday, to skulk up the driveway of one of the depots and have a look at the back. Corrugated iron is a staple of Australian rears; in these modernist times people even use them for frontages, but when Marrickville was growing up (the last half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries) hiding things behind impressive brickwork was the norm. Not just a desire to impress; brickworks were a major industry in the 19th century, as evidenced by Henson Park, a former quarry recycled as a velodrome for the 1938 Empire Games. Also, I feel, by the texture of the clay about two feet down in my backyard; it could just about be used for modelling clay unwashed. Also, it's the same colour as local brick. The marble sheets have the look of a kitchen benchtop business.

But actually, not just benchtops, but art. If you had a friend who was (or yourself were) a truckdriver using the depots behind, or a bus driver working for the three coach bus line that shares the forecourt of the despatch sheds, and you were looking for an original greek sculpture, this is where you'd come. I wonder if s/he works in the pre-classical, classical, or post-classical style? Or is continuing to refine the craft, informed by the 20th century?

This is the side of the sculptor's shed. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but this picture needs its sound effect; through this window is coming the sound of a piano, practised...heedlessly. A lot of mistakes, but plenty of competent passages too. Casual, bored by the long (Tuesday*) afternoon. If the window was still intact, maybe they'd know it had stopped raining?

* You need to understand public holidays in Australia. While it's true that Boxing Day was Sunday, Sunday is already a holiday. Not wanting to waste the few public holidays we have, it was moved to Tuesday.

Kitchen update

This is what $150 worth of physiotherapy looks like - plus a bit extra for paint and masking tape. More than 60 meters of masking tape went into doing this; in fact, just the masking alone took up the best part of half a day. Not being able to stand safely on the counter top (who knows how strong it is?) slowed me down a fair bit. It's a long stretch from the ladder to the top edge of the ceiling, which is about 12 ft. up.

This picture was taken immediately after all the stuff was moved back in; it may not look that tidy to anyone else, but for us this is the epitome (or apotheosis) of tidiness.

The main feature of the repaint is in fact the "feature" wall; although it's pretty un-startling compared to feature walls I have known elsewhere. Still, my thinking is that the blue has a fairly strong presence as well, so best not to overdo it. The off-white has changed from pink undertones to green/blue undertones, for obvious reasons. What else can I say? Oh yes, I filled about 20 meters worth of cracks as well. It's a complete mystery why Australian tradesmen (we've had 3 plasterers though) don't use lime mortar. It doesn't crack under small movements, so, perfect for walls on a clay footing. OK, now I know enough to insist on it, but I wasn't an expert on

renders when we moved in here.

If I knew what I needed to know to supervise the people who worked here, I wouldn't actually need any of them to work here. That seems faintly odd to me.

The cat doesn't like the new arrangement, and has decided to move into a new catcave. Perhaps it's the smell of the paint.

Just passing

Of limited interest to most, but Coffee Alchemy (see elsewhere) has just won the 2011 "God Coffee" award from one of the international coffee magazines (who knew?). They are quietly pleased with themselves, fair enough too. Since my last review the coffee probably isn't any better, but the range of coffees for tasting just increases all the time. Still with the San Emilio as my favourite.

I had a great training run Tuesday. I don't know whether the new training regime, which includes 2 days rest with a loooooonnnnngggg slow run (21.5K along the Cooks River) sandwiched between them, or just a random confluence of positive influences was responsible. Hopefully it's a promising sign for the Penrith half marathon, which is coming up in October. Weird business.

Coffee Alchemy - Single estate tasting notes

All these beans are run through a Jura C5 as a medium strength long black. Sometimes I try them with milk, sometimes not.


El Savador - San Emilio
??????
This is seriously one of the nicest coffees I've drunk. It's particularly fantastic with milk, but also excellent black. I don't know coffee tasting language, but it seems velvety, not at all bitter, rich but not extreme.

Red Icatu
I think this is a different bean from the same estate; similar but less rich in flavour. I'm not completely sure though. It's certainly from San Emilio.

Guatamala - Huehuetenango injenta


This is another good coffee, more vigorous, almost like a dark chocolate, although again. not bitter. I haven't tried it with milk, but I suspect it might not work quite so well. (It doesn't) For me this coffee is best after cereal - seems to bring out the flavour, although that's puzzling in a way because the dominant after-taste of cereal is milk, but I can't get the same effect by milking the coffee; as a standalone or with bread it doesn't work quite so well.

Sumatra - Blve Batak?/Balak?


Kind of a blurred taste, then the next two mouthfuls were a bit thin, but finally ended up with quite a rich & fulfilling mouth feel. (I've decided to make up my own language). Sadly, not enough to take home & try with milk. I'm increasingly of the opinion that coffee tastes in its context. With a crusty bread roll it tastes different than with a croissant, etc. etc. Obvious you may say, but often overlooked I feel.

Ethiopia Sidarra - Haile Selassie


I haven't tried this yet, but one thing I can say is that it smells like no other coffee I have ever smelt. Can something smell dry & dusty? This does, like summer soil. Turned out to taste pretty good, as a black coffee only. It didn't taste nice with milk at all.

Kenya - Oreti


This was an OK coffee that didn't particularly distinguish itself in any direction. Pleasant, but not outstanding. As exemplified by the fact that I didn't bother to blog it until after it ran out, and now I can't remember anything particular to say about it. Oh, except it was good with yeasty white bread.

Ethiopia - Nigus(s)e Lemma
 What I think of as "typical African" taste, thin, with the impact on rear sides of tongue. Fantastic bouquet in the beans, strongly floral/grassy, but not coming through to the brew.

Tanzania - Ruvuma AAA
Has an "African finish", a little bitter, which is OK, it's not at all unpleasant, and not present while drinking. The beans have a chocolatey smell, a little dry. Pleasant to drink black or with milk. Perhaps a little undistinguished in flavour, but not bad. About on a par in the mouth with the Guatamala above, only better with milk. Certainly nicer than the Ethiopian & Kenyan.

Panama - Paso Ancho
Another OK, but not outstanding bean. A little bitter, not too much. Nice aroma as a bean, but not following through to the mouth.

Brasil Moreninha Formosa
Great aroma, the chocolate drifts in towards the end. Nice to drink, not bitter. Not an overwhelming flavour; good with milk.

Mexico - Oaxaca Organic
I thought this had a kind of egg-y smell, not unpleasant. Then I thought of pipe tobacco. A pleasant drink, particularly good as the first coffee of the day; not because of the caffeine content, just because it seemed to deal with the "morning mouth" syndrome particularly well.

Costa Rica Garanbito (honey cured)
Not a bad breakfast coffee; the honey is a long way back in the flavour, but it's noticeable. For my money, better as a black than white coffee base.

Columbia - Naryano? 
I forgot to make a note while I was still drinking it, and now I can't remember: I guess we could assume that means it wasn't outstanding in any particular direction.

Guatemala - Finca Ceylan y Anexos
Most noticeable about this coffee is that it packs a killer caffeine punch; no way can I drink 3 a day & even 2 is beginning to seem risky. As to flavour, it's a bit earthy/dry, lacking in aromatics. Not so great with milk. A coffee to wake up to, but not one to savour with a croissant.

Winter sun

 There's no particular reason to post these pictures, but it was the first day after about two weeks solid of rain & I like the cold clear wet feel of those days. Also, staying inside would probably have meant writing an essay.

This is (in) the backup frog pond. We had so much rain last year that one of the frog families relocated to this old milk crate, and we've kept it going as a pond even through the dries of summer. Whatever this stuff is called, it grows like a weed in water.

 It just hasn't been a success, this maple. It look good about twice a year, once in Spring when the leaves are brand new, and once in autumn, when the brown edges are forgiveable.

In those moments though, it's quite something.

This actually self-seeded from the other fern tree which we planted on purpose. Now it's nearly caught up and provides perfect shade in summer. In winter, it's part of a conspiracy to keep the washing from drying.

And as you can see, it's got no plans to stop growing just yet. The washing line will be relocated this summer.





This camellia is part of the original imagined Himalayan rain forest section of the garden, but the canopy tee next door was cut down a long time ago & so it generally dries out too quickly. But after weeks of solid rain, it exactly matches the original specification.










First blue sky in a fortnight. And in fact, this tree is borrowed from the neighbours. I can see it from the window in front of my desk.

Sunday Market

OK. Technically this is not part of the Sunday market, other than that I saw it walking home. The picture reminds me of one of my absolutely favourite childhood books - tile,author, long forgotten - in which a postman, so as to deliver the mail during a local flood, removes the tires from his bike so he can cycle along the power lines.

I haven't succumbed yet, but it's a cute idea. Actually, I did see one at the market, with a tow-along cart, the roof of which was constructed from photo-voltaic cells. Quite neat.  I don't know if the electric bikes convert the spare rotational energy (as in going downhill) into electricity. They should. Anyway, one way or another, Sunday markets bring out the locally ingenious.

We've been patronising this market for about, maybe, eight years? Since it started. It limped along for an awfully long time; failed to survive a few winters and then finally, in I think the hands of its third lot of entrepreneurs, has really kicked into gear. Most summer days it's absolutely packed and even in winter there is a pretty fair turnout. This is the middle of the food section. I think Sunday markets say something about the demographic of the neighbourhood. They are a luxury product, despite their down-at-heel charm. For example, dumplings at the Chinese dumpling stall cost more than any Ashfield restaurant. The meat prices would make my local butcher blush. But that isn't really the point. Charm is what's on sale, and there is plenty of it. Plus, undeniably, there are things you get here that you just can't get anywhere else.

Take the cheese man for example. It's pretty hard to find good cheese in Sydney; the Greek deli has some, but the range is pretty narrow and they don't really understand blue. This guy, on the other hand, is a fanatic. And he has some fantastic cheeses, from Australia, Spain, Italy, France, South America. It probably is expensive ($70 a kilo is about his minimum charge) but I have no idea where to get cheese this good, and I don't need a car to get it. I just buy $10 worth, big lump or small, and enjoy it. My favourite cheese story is the morning/afternoon cheese; in each round the bottom half is morning milk; then a layer of ash; then the top is filled up with evening milk.  I hope it's true, but I really don't care that much if it isn't. It's a fantastic cheese, irrespective of the story, sort of a mild Tilsit.

Liz is the mushroom connoisseur. I have to admit that they look fantastic - in salads maybe it's possible to tell the difference. The way I cook, I'm not sure that I'm doing them justice.  The only thing I know about mushrooms is that shiitake contain natural glutamate - which is allegedly the "fifth flavour", very "in" at the moment. Tomatoes contain it too; that's why everything made with tomatoes tastes good. Shiitake have replaced salt in my cooking.

It kind of reinforces the boutique luxury product ambiance, though. Think authentic.

Once you move beyond the food section - Mexican, Chinese, organic, Nepalese, Turkish, Malaysian, Chinese, three bakers, the bratwurst man, Indian, scone/muffin/cake stalls, cheese times 2, meat twice, pickles, nuts and finally olives: this is the winter list - you get to the stuff section, clothes and junk. This is my section of the junk, although I'm trying not to buy books at the moment. The patch of grass you can see in the background illustrates that the weather today is not encouraging. If the sun were shining there would be no grass un-stalled.


I've left out the picture of the fruit and vegie stall (there are three) where we do the weekly food shop. I get to practise Chinese; really, simple repetition is the best practise plus you actually learn useful things like the names of food in Chinese, stuff that is in no text books, but is so fundamentally basic you can't imagine why not.

Croissants

Among the many weaknesses in my character, the elevenses croissant is relatively recent, although the breakfast croissant stretches back to 1989 and La Cucina on Chapel St when I was working for the ANZ around the corner. Every morning I'd clock on at 8 & then duck out for an hour to read the paper, drink coffee & eat a croissant. That job was probably worth ten of the 100-odd kilos I used to cart around. Anyway, even 1989 is recent compared to the espresso coffee vice, which dates back to 1978 (it was an instant coffee vice before then).

The idea of elevenses (one of the great words) was pretty much absent from my life until I started eating breakfast in 2008, after about a 30-year gap. One of my objections to breakfast had always been that it made me hungry at 11, and curiously, despite being 20 kg overweight already, I was worried about putting on more. It's a kind of pseudo-logic; ignore the idea of a healthy eating pattern on the grounds that adding two meals into an unhealthy diet will only make things worse. Sort of like comparing apples and, say, lard.

Getting back to the main line, eating at 11 is a side-effect of eating breakfast and it just happened that when I was experimenting seriously with breakfast I was living in Guangzhou, and bizarrely Guangzhou is one of the best places in the world to buy croissants. Bread is pretty haut-moderne in big Chinese cities and as a luxury good they take making it very seriously, part of the justification of the unbelievable (in relative terms) price. A good croissant in Guangzhou costs as much as a cheap croissant in Marrickville, that is, around AUD $1.30. (Most food in Guangzhou costs about 1/3 to 1/2 of what it would cost here) But that Guangzhou croissant is a helluva thing. It's fantastic.  (This continues a trend of China supplying some of the best European-originated experiences I have had - three of the best four coffees, for example.) They're light, fluffy on the inside, crisp on the outside, a little bit flaky, an ambiance of butter, damn near perfect. Perhaps, carping, fractionally too small. You can in fact try one in Sydney (probably in Melbourne too) at one of the Breadtop franchises. Breadtop croissants tend to be a little overcooked, IMO, but it only affects the outside. It is an amazing tribute to their franchise quality control that this is as true in Sydney as it is in Guangzhou (at a total of about seven outlets altogether - I'm sure it would be true for all of them).

So, thanks to Guangzhou, I'm a croissant-at-11 addict. Now still, if I'm in Sydney CBD, Haymarket particularly, I'll go looking for a Breadtop croissant. But in the Marrickville/Enmore parts of Andrewsville, there are no Breadtops. But there are still croissants.

Peter's croissant on kitchen table

Peter's (the local milkbar) gets them in from somewhere, they're excellent and cheap. But he doesn't get in that many & if they're gone, I have to duck in to the newsagent. There, they're more expensive, and sometimes a day old. Beware a place that offers to microwave your croissants and looks surprised when you say no - a failing of 2204, the most local coffee shop (pretty much their only fault, other than expense) as well.


Moving on from the croissants that are less than 2 minutes away, there's a fork in the road at Victoria St. Left, up the hill to Enmore, and neither of the two bakeries up there that I frequent does an outstanding croissant (one does an outstanding donut, but I haven't eaten donuts for about three years). Adequate, so if I am there for other reasons I don't see any reason to forgo morning tea, but not at all outstanding. Right, down to Marrickville proper past Mitchell St and the Bourke St bakery (it's a franchise - guess where it started?). I'm a bit ambivalent about the Mitchell St croissants. On the good side, they are big and fluffy. On the other side, for me, they are a little bready, not as light as I like and they don't have enough butter, or, more accurately, they don't have the right butter taste. They tend a bit towards the Breadtop colour, which suggests overcooked, and they are, as befits an East Sydney franchise, the most expensive croissant for miles around, by some margin. Bourke St do a bunch of things - sourdough, tarts, bakery coffee - outstandingly well, but their croissants are only adequate by comparison.

Heading into Marrickville Rd you can easily walk past the first bakery, it's tiny. Whether or not they have croissants is random, but when they do they are very buttery, and cheap. They don't do service with a smile, but I guess if I was 70 and had to get up at 3am to start a 17-hour working day, I might be a bit grumpy from time to time.

Opposite them but a bit further up the hill is the Paris Bakery; the winners as far as I am concerned. Their croissants are not quite as light as the Breadtop version (really, those Chinese croissant bakers do magic on that score, it's not just Breadtop) but they are light, they don't feel like bread, they have plenty of butter & they are not burned. They are also cheap - sometimes I buy two.

Coffee Alchemy - breaking news

My local boutique coffee roaster and coffee shop went up several notches in my estimation this week.

 First, they have kept the great minimalist look and feel of the shop interior, which is tiny in fact, and somehow managed to get comfortable - repeat, yet minimalist - seating for seven. And there's a very nice mat laying on the floor. They're only small changes, but the miracle that is good interior design strikes again.

The other giant leap forward is they now do boutique espressos of three (on any given day) of their single estate blends; I had a big argument with them about eight months ago over this, when they didn't do it - crazy - you can't be serious about beans and simultaneously force all your customers to drink one blend, I don't care how good the blend is, so (don't know when this new policy started, but it's a major breakthrough) this now leapfrogs into top place by a country mile.

If they provide free chilled filtered water (I'll suggest it to them) it will be the perfect coffee shop, and it will still be only 200 metres from the front door!

Still, 9/10 isn't a bad score. 

*Update* They do provide fresh water with the boutique espresso! 9.5/10 (It isn't chilled)

Spiders

We have a new friend in the front garden; actually, we had another golden orb a few years ago and she was so well fed - our garden is a spiders paradise in terms of the number of insects we support - that I thought we'd be starting a colony of them. But no,the distribution system for baby spiders seems to be totally uninformed by historical information, so this is the first one we've had since then.




I haven't quite got the hang of this camera yet - it is auto focus only (but it has a great anti-shake mechanism, so I don't need to set out the tripod, which my serious camera demands) so sometimes it chooses to focus on not what I think is the point of the whole exercise.

Near and far

This is the new desk (detail, as they say) - recycled bluegum, sanded to within an inch of its life, oiled and sanded some more, and then oiled and sanded again. If I wasn't constitutionally lazy, I might have tried the 800-grain sandpaper, and the pumice powder. But I am, so I didn't - still, it's smooth enough to create an impression of unusual smoothness; it's more polished than our commercially finished pieces. I'm very pleased with it, although I have to admit that it doesn't quite match up to Liz' bathroom work.

We actually found a new recycled timber place in Rockdale (which is where this comes from) so we may end up with a house entirely full of timber, because they have just an endless supply of truly amazing pieces. Particularly taken with a fireplace surround that is bigger than our living room.

I haven't quite finished the desk yet; I want to put some shelving under it as well. Modern life, eh. Three laptops. The giant screen is my attempt to fight off eye strain while studying this year; I can read two documents on it in slightly magnified A4 size, and type on a third on the laptop screen. The little one is still going because it runs some software I haven't managed to get going on Microsoft's latest OS yet - the third one is Liz's, although I'm slowly colonising it.

There is a plan to reduce the clutter, but not yet a plan how to reduce the clutter. The original design brief for the table was somewhere to put the computers and paint!

This is the "far" of the title - about as far as I go really - Penrith whitewater rafting facility, leftover from the Olympics. I'm about to leap in a raft and see how wet one man can get without falling in the water. This is where Liz broke her wrist last year, so it's amazingly brave of her to be back. It's all part of training for the Yukon, which has whitewater, unlike the recent Murray trip. The Murray does have whitewater, but not on the marathon course.

The course is an eye-opener as to how strong the Olympic standard competitors need to be - they have to paddle upstream through half the gates, and let me tell you paddling downstream is extremely hard work. My arms ache today. And they don't really turn on the taps fully for us - it really is hard to believe that going upstream is even possible, let alone that you can steer through a "gate".

Pambula

Obviously Pambula is a pretty remote outlying area of Andrewsville, although, given childhood holidays, perhaps not as remote as might be thought at first glance. This time we stayed at Pambula Lake & I have a couple of nice photos. Otherwise, I doubt this entry would have happened.

A nice piece of rural humour (like the asking price for land around here!). It's one of the few elements of rural life that I have found myself in sympathy with down the years. Fake bishops as race marshals, Elvis Presley roads to nowhere.

Art, really. This is one of Liz' pictures; she has steady hands and a good eye. I see hundreds of ideas for what I think are good photographs, but not so many of them turn out. Even if I take 50 on the principle that one might be OK, it usually isn't. But this uses depth of field very nicely to take your eye across the page and create movement.

Well, this actually is the result of one of the take 50 pictures attempts. If you think it's easy getting butterflies to pose for you...

Having to manual focus didn't help the hand shake, either. But I am quite pleased with it, obviously, or it wouldn't be here. I tried taking pictures of butterflies in Malaysia, in a butterfly house, and the only decent pictures I could get there were of dead ones (there were plenty, I didn't have to kill them myself). This is a big improvement.

There's nothing wrong with cute animal pictures. 20% of all ducks have a different way of looking at things. Wonder if it works better for them than for me?

The region of Enmore

The boom in extremely local food/coffee plus the Sunday market has taken Enmore off the frequently visited list; it's shifted to the outskirts of Andrewsville while I was away. And I don't eat pizza, which eliminates the two Italian, two Turkish & one Lebanese pizza place. Although, in point of fact, I have been at war with one of the Italian places over their half-and-half pricing policy (which fluctuates randomly) for about five years & the other one is ordinary. I only ever ate pizza at one of the two Turkish places, because it was there first and I felt sorry for them when a bright shiny competitor opened next door. It (the competitor) is very good for all non-Turkish-pizza Turkish food, and that's where I would take you for lunch, so my pity hasn't really helped the original place that much. The Lebanese pizza is post my retiring from pizza eating, so I can only comment that it smells less offensive than pizza places generally do. And it's quite cheap.

I don't eat Thai food any more. It doesn't really bear repetition. Thai restaurants generally remind me of the 1960's Cantonese-Australian Chinese restaurant - still readily found in country towns, serving a kind of compromised, standardised hotchpotch. When I had Thai students they never stopped complaining how bad Australian Thai food was, and I had no trouble agreeing. There are good places, of course, but they are increasingly hard to find. Compromised standard hotchpotch is so popular that there is really no incentive to one-up it.

Years ago the first of the Enmore breakfast/coffee places was run by a couple of Greek guys & their mother cooking. It was next to the laundromat & newsagent so made itself compulsory during the prolonged renovation & on rainy weekends (we don't have a dryer). Those guys have moved on, there are four (five?) competitors within 400 metres, all of them failing to create a compelling space. Also the laundromat has been converted into a bakery, and the other laundromat is now a locksmith.

There is one Chinese-owned patisserie & coffee place that if I am having a stop in Enmore will be where you find me. They do great doughnuts (which I no longer eat) and their French pastry range is perfectly OK. Sadly the coffee isn't great, but they hang original art on the walls & conduct extremely loud Mandarin conversations in the kitchen so I can practice eavesdropping.

There's a new bakery but it's pretty expensive. None of the boutique bakers, apart from Bourke St, come even vaguely close to the Marrickville downmarket bakers, at least not for value & traditional French/Italian breads.

Enmore has my bank; there's a fair chance that if that closed I wouldn't come here at all.

Enmore Theater has a coffee shop/cafe that drips unrenovated-for-50-years atmosphere. It's only open at night (early evening, more precisely) though & we're generally too busy to go. And I don't eat muffins/cakes/tiramisu/strudel any more. Nor can I sensibly drink coffee and sleep within a 6 hour timeframe. Still, it's a pleasure to be able to be nostalgic about it. I love high-ceilinged places where, when empty, all the noise seems to disappear into the ceiling space making the booths unnaturally silent. The silence is strong enough to create privacy - words don't move sideways through it. When the place is crowded, the high space captures all the noise and blends it into accoustic padding; everything you say is muffled and your conversation never gets close to the next table.

Faheem's Fast Food ought to be more legendary that it is; they have a particular mastery over the Tandoor oven, and they do some dahl combinations that I have never seen anywhere else. Being a twelve year plus regular give me the peculiar privilege of fractionally less surly service than everyone else. They won't have enjoyed the last cricket season, being as they are, a Pakistani,rather than Indian, restaurant. This place used to be legendary with the subcontinental taxi-driving community & we were frequently to only Anglo's there; that was when they were on the downhill side of the Warrenview pub & there was plenty of parking. When they moved into the Newtown side of Enmore they lost the parking and a fair whack of their taxi trade, but they put their prices up by a couple of dollars (still cheap) and they are packed with low rent cool people (Enmore residents). A Bangladeshi restaurant opened next door - made absolutely zero impact & now FFF has taken over that space as well. To give you a vague idea of how good this place is, I have Melbourne friends who insist on being taken there when they come to visit.

Coffee

Within 10 minutes walk, these are the main coffee places.

2204, on Addison Rd opposite the laundromat & barber. Great place for coffee, the de-rendered brick interior is fantastic to look at, just like the house at various times during renovation, only, designed, not accidental. And more finished - they presumably were paying the guy who knocked the render off the walls, unlike me relying on voluntary labour. Makes a big difference. It's cleverly lit, too, there are angles, shadows, highlights and glow as in old timber. Fantastic seats, comfortable, stylish, not overcrowded. Great coffee, a cappuccino which actually combines the flavours of milk & coffee successfully. But, but, but but but - the food is ordinary & not cheap. I had a croissant there which they wanted to heat up for me; I found out why when I declined - it was at least a full day stale. At the milkbar over the road I can buy a fantastic fresh daily croissant for $1.30. OK, maybe I'm a cheapskate, but $3.50 is a big mark up for the chair. I don't think it's fair to eat someone else's croissant, so 2204 misses out on my coffee dollar if I'm feeling peckish. Also, the milkbar has legendary snails for the same $1.30 price. If, that is, you get there in time - recently someone else has discovered them who gets up earlier than I do. Still, in pure coffee terms, 2204 can't be faulted.

Update on 2204 - it has acquired a license & a chef. The menu is a touch generic (but so are customers, what can you do?), although having said that the BLT, hold the lettuce, add grilled haloumi is a fantastic idea. A hot cheese sandwich. Cool. Well, now they have some significant points of difference.

The local newsagent also sells coffee at three tables outside the shop & to a couple of stools perched around the espresso machine. His pricing is right ($1 for a long black) & his croissants are fair at $2.50 - you expect to pay a loading for the seat - especially as they are always fresh as well. He has a sensational almond croissant for those who might not be counting calories. Prior to 2204 opening I was semi-regular here because coffee, croissant, newspaper & low key is a perfect quadrangle for me. The problem was, and is, that the coffee is very weak & milky. You can ask for it to be stronger, but then it's very bitter/acorny. In fact, here is the reason I have started drinking cappucino after a lifetime of long blacks & macciato. I'm not such a news addict at the moment, so I've given up this traditional (since about 1977 for me) morning. In fact, even if I were still a news junkie - impossible since the SMH turned tabloid & the Australian lurched to the gutter right - I'd probably pay the extra dollar and read the paper in 2204 because, after all, what's a dollar? If I skip the croissant I'm still ahead of the financial game. It's a bit sad, because there's an quality of accident to coffee at the newsagents which a coffee place can never have. But it doesn't offset the coffee issue.

For the serious minimalist, there's a bulk coffee roaster - Coffee Alchemy - at the other end of Addison who sells coffee by the cup for consumption on a very hard bench or two very hard chairs outside for the smokers. This is pretty hard to fault, except that they only do one blend in the espresso machine, so in-shop experimentation is not possible . They do have other blends available as drip filter for taste testing, if that's your form. I like both the espresso blends I buy from them, they probably get about 30% of my domestic supply. No mucking around with food. There's a lot going on some days; you can get a big batch roast happening in the back room while an experimental roast is happening on a spare corner of the front counter - times, temperatures & aroma notes scribbled down on stock notes. As well as the smell of the coffee coming out of the machine (harsh to call it a cliche, because it IS a great smell, but as an ambiance note it is a lazy tick for most coffee shops) there is the faintly sour, somewhat grassy smell of green beans roasting.

If you turn left at Enmore Rd halfway up the hill is the Bus Stop coffee shop. It has good coffee, but it mainly has stools. I don't sit on stools except at Pellegrini's, so I haven't adopted it. I could in theory, I pass it about 6 times a week walking up to Enmore. One thing that I do like a lot - but not quite enough to overcome stool-phobia - is that there is automatic drinking water with every coffee. I'm a big fan of water. Note - last trip there was no water, and the coffee was milky. It will be the last trip now in both senses of the word. Note to note - still no water (compelled to use it to kill 30 minutes waiting for my bike rims to be drilled to fit the bog-standard tyre valve which is all you can get on the antique 27" tubes I have to use) but, but, they have a bookshelf. With stuff that is actually worth reading. And a table with chairs rather than stools. Recalibration of the coffee universe occurring. Hear the cogs grinding as the increasingly aplastic neural matter rearranges itself.

Turn right, and walk for maybe 400 meters and you get to the Bourke St. franchise in Mitchell street. This is a bakery first and coffee shop second, but they get the majority of my local coffee spend because their food is fantastic. The pies are superb - not hot enough for my taste, I like to burn my tongue on the first bite & these are actually perfect temperature for immediate consumption - but superb anyway. Likewise the sausage rolls, which contain meat. Their croissant/danish/pain au choc/ are all OK, priced at Paddington boutique rather than Marrickville baker prices (there are two bakeries that don't sell coffee in Marrickville which do fantastic croissants/danishes at $1.50 & $1.30, walk for another 10 minutes). However Bourke St.s killer bread is their sourdough & rye loaves. It is impossible to leave without buying one. They've nearly got me to give up on Vienna loaves. Ah, and another thing. The custard in their tarts is unbelievable. I have no idea what they are doing, but it is superb. Stunning. More than makes up for the rather biscuity tart, which I don't like, but is low in shortening if you pay attention to that kind of thing.

Forewarned

All the places that I go must constitute a space uniquely defined. This is some of it.

This is my favourite church in Marrickville; St Brigid's; it's angular, rendered, demanding attention against a blue sky. The light poles belong to Henson Park, where I used to run, and now cycle, every morning. The trees are in Jarvie Park, behind the high school.

Henson Park is a former quarry, now an amphitheatre for, most famously, the Newtown Jets, but also Australian Rules on alternate weekends. I'm sure the residents around it are content as things are, but it's a tragedy we can't find a use for it as a performance venue. Largest crowd recorded was around 40,000, during the 1938 Empire Games, which is what Henson Park was built for. The hill opposite is huge, not far off the Myer Music Bowl. It's also the site of several model plane accidents (mine); it's too windy.

I'm sure the man himself never got to see his memorial grandstand, but I hope he would have been pleased with it. It's elegant; the curved tin roof and the curved rear windows are unusual touches on a suburban grandstand, and the clarity and scale are interesting. It seems simultaneously larger than you'd expect and perfectly fitted into what is really not a particularly large oval. In fact, the fence lane of the oval is 480 meters. The cycle track behind the seats is 190 meters more at 570 meters. It isn't really a cycle track by design, but since the original velodrome track has been replaced (post the 1938 Empire Games), the maintenance vehicle access path serves a double function. It's also popular with the walkers who occupy the early mornings. It's a pity not to recognise the architect for a good, if undemonstrative, job.

The other church on the skyline is St Clements. I like the camouflaged steeple, but I haven't heard of any accidents with low flying planes yet.

It's two blocks south of St Brigid's, and about 10 minutes walk from Henson Park. It's a red brick church, with a massive slate roof that lifts the ambience from the suburban to the, well, let's say gestural. It doesn't have much street presence but as part of a landscape it manages some impact.