Brood Box Cafe

Today I felt a bit arty and I was in CBD and I wanted a good coffee. Pretentious you may say, yes I was. There are lots of nice galleries around CBD, some with new artists, others with emerging ones, but coffee is not contemplated usually. I have been in exposition where beer and wine was available but not coffee. There are cafes around that also have little expositions on the wall, of local artists, but I would not consider it as a gallery, and most of them are not in CBD anyway. I was in Hardware Lane and I was giving up and going to Brother Baba Budan in Little Bourke, an icon in this area.
But, as my grandfather used to tell me, never give up. In Rankins lane, signals of a café and of a gallery, in the same place!! Let's check it out. It is called Brood Box and it has two goals, promote and sell paints, of emerging and/or famous artists, promote and sell good coffee. I think today I have scored my goal. The owner explains how they change collection every few weeks to have always new artists exposing, he is clearly the arty person. The barista highlights instead the coffee blend, a Kenyan Fine Estate AA from St.Ali (yes, the usual St.Ali), they change frequently and you can follow them on twitter.
Well let's get down to the important business, let's taste the espresso. No milk, no sugar, just the coffee taste. Gorgeous, delicious, fantastic, I closed my eyes and I felt to be in Africa for few seconds :-o. And the barista did a great work with the espresso too, with the right temperature and foam on top. Very happy with it. I tasted the coffee without sugar but after that I added just a bit of it for my enjoyment, which somehow worked better to me, though you loose a bit of real coffee taste I must say.
There is no food available, but, this is a café-gallery and not really café place I guess.

Rating (5=too good to be true,1=i saw and tasted much much better)
Coffee: 4.5 Difficult to beat
Food: 0 No food available
Service: 4 Lovely barista that explains you the blend and the future plans, I could kiss him at the end. Clearly there is passion here, for art and for coffee
Place: 4 I loved this mix of art and coffee

8 Rankins Lane, Melbourne CBD
www.broodbox.com.au - info@broodbox.com.au