Yarraville

January 1999

In the heart of Yarraville, you can't see much of the Yarra and though it's only 15 minutes over the Westgate Bridge, you do feel a long way from the city.

But narrow Ballarat Street is like no country road, more like a village main street, where everyone knows each other and where it's safe for the kids to wander. The 'kids' in Yarraville are of the big and small variety. Grown up kids can be nostalgic about their childhood and go to vintage screenings at the 30's Sun Theatre.

If cinema is the culture of first half of this century then maybe coffee will be seen as that of the latter years. And the caffe latte centre of it all is at Java in Ballarat Street with its cool blue cushions in the window and some of Melbourne's most famous pop star mums who park the pram there for breakfast.

Four and a half years ago when Penelope Ann started her vegetarian cafe with its changing art on the walls, she was a lone pioneer on Murray St. But just in the last year half a dozen new places have sprung up around her. She wonders if Yarraville's growing trendy population can keep all of them full.

But Yarraville is not just new cafes. One of the most successful dining rooms there is at the old fashioned Yarraville Hotel, also known as The Bluestone, these days painted very white. Here hundreds of families, toddlers and grandparents included, pack out the back dining room and beer garden every night of the week. Many of the substantial meals (to which you can add from a large self service salad section) cost as little as $5 and a huge T-bone and chips is $9. It's a dark room with no particular decor and no pokies just lots of families getting together and eating heaps.

The other popular hotel but with very different clientele and prices is the Commercial Hotel in Whitehall Rd. Here the feeling is retro, but even funkier and warmer than Brunswick St . The hotel has retained a good old style cosy feel, with its series of different rooms - the front part is carpeted and tables well spread but it gets noisy on weekend band nights, this leads into another dining section beside the kitchen featuring a fish tank without fish but instead a sunken 'jumbo' ocean liner. The concrete floor here is painted, the tables and chairs are old laminex and steel kitchen style, there are flowers in glasses and lots of 'art' on the walls. Alongside the bar is a very dark, laid back living room, I hesitate to call it a Lounge, its more homely than that with its TV beside the fireplace, plastic flowers and standard lamps. Out back the pool table is encased in a leopard skin material (also featuring in the toilets) and a vine-covered beer garden. The menu is as mixed as the setting with quite a range of cuisines on offer served from a clean, well organised kitchen.

The kitchen at Costa's Tavern is also on view and there is a good range of grilled meats and fish available here. Traditional Greek food from $8-13 served in a more 'formal' room - Victorian style wall paper and reproduction chandeliers along with carpet, cloths and paper napkins. Certainly more upmarket than George's Greek cafe which has been feeding George's Greek friends for many years as has Grecian Delights been making excellent traditional Greek pastries, both in Ballarat St. Last year Jillian's opened and is Yarraville's first 'serious' restaurant, serving middle European food in a more upmarket setting. It has quickly become very popular particularly at weekends for its music afternoons and lavish cakes. Cafe Fidama, open about two years now, is also recommended but is more low-key and very child-friendly.

And you know that people like to eat in Yarraville when a shop such as Serious Cooks, Books, & Cooking Classes opens and fills cooking classes, even for blokes. Then last November the Feedback Cafe opened in Ballarat St. whilst round the corner in Anderson St a new bakery cafe, the Alfa Bakehouse, opened. But the one that everyone is waiting for is the Cut Paw Paw which owner Peter Clarkson hopes will open next month. It's now a year since Peter and his partner took over what was once the Fruit Palace in Anderson St. After months of legal battles, and some 40 re-designs of the building, Yarraville's grandest (seating about 90) new cafe will certainly establish the Parish of Cut Paw Paw (truly it's the old planning name) as serious eating territory.

See also John Pasquarelli's piece on Yarraville

Mietta O'Donnell

This first appeared in the Herald Sun on 19 January, 1999.
©Mietta's 1999.