Cookbooks in the Cafe’s Kitchen
Melbourne, Australia, is one of the world’s great food cities. In addition to the upcoming Taste of Slow Festival, the southern hemisphere metropolis hosts the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival annually, and it’s home to lauded chefs such as Teage Ezard and Jamie Oliver (at least part-time: he’s opening a branch of his Fifteen restaurant project here). There are eight-hundred restaurants in the city center alone, and hundreds more in the surrounding neighborhoods — but if your goal is to shop for cookbooks and eat at the same time, head directly to the Cook Book Kitchen in suburban Surrey Hills.
Bill Granger, Kylie Kwong, and Melbourne locals Allan Campion and Michele Curtis are among the Aussie chefs whose appetizing tomes line the Cook Book Kitchen’s walls. There’s also a shelf full of kitchen reference books, and diners are welcome to browse the collection over breakfast or lunch. But given the resources available, the menu is disappointingly bland — is it really necessary to attribute a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich to Jamie Oliver? Of course, in light of the current controversy over recipe copyrights in the restaurant world, this cafe may be wise to give credit where it’s due.
The Cookbook Kitchen
116 Union Road
Surrey Hills (Melbourne, Australia)
(04) 9888-4046
Mon-Sat 8am-4pm
