Three places in Melbourne I wish I'd found earlier

Only one of them is chocolate-related!

Xocolatl

I managed to get to Xocolatl (123 Maling Road, Canterbury) twice. It is simply fantastic - if you love chocolate, it's definitely worth making the trip (and hey, it's only a 20 minute train ride from the city - the shop is about a 30 second walk from Canterbury station).

If you don't love chocolate, but you get dragged along by a friend, they've got a selection of gelati which also looks pretty amazing. On my two trips, I stuck to the chocolate...

First of all, the hot chocolate,



which comes in 4 different flavours: Belgian, Orange, Peppermint and Chilli. You can smell the orange and peppermint flavours from across the table. All are fantastic!

Then, the chocolate itself...
From this:



to this:



They have some interesting flavours - like mango and gorgonzola (which is actually spectacularly good!) and gingerbread (yum!).

As I said, it's worth the trip!



I believe they've now opened another branch in Kew. They don't seem to have a website, though.

Hot Poppy

I heard about Hot Poppy (9 Errol St, North Melbourne) as a place which has a good range of loose-leaf tea, which they serve in a pot ($3.90 per pot, by the way, out of which you get about 4 cups - so it's pretty good value!).

I took myself there for breakfast on my last Sunday in Melbourne. They use maple-flavoured syrup, not real maple syrup, so I ended up having raisin toast, which was possibly the best raisin toast I've ever had: thick, with apricots and a little ginger in addition to the usual fruit, perfectly toasted and nicely buttery.

The tea I tried was raspberry and mint - it didn't taste very fruity, so I suspect it was raspberry *leaves* (something which I've always thought goes well with mint), and I was extremely - but pleasantly - surprised to discover the mint in the blend was spearmint.

As I was wandering back along Victoria Street, outside the markets, I noticed...

Tea Party

I can't believe I haven't spotted Tea Party before, as I've been going to the markets pretty much every week. However, I generally don't walk along the Victoria St side, and when I do, it's because I want to get to the back very quickly. And a lot of the shops on that side are pretty touristy, so I have a tendency to ignore them.

Anyway, I noticed it this time, probably because I had the taste of that fantastic spearmint tea in my mouth, and was dreaming about finding spearmint tea (preferably in leaf form, but I'd've settled for teabags!), something I always keep an eye out for but have only ever found in two - well, now three - places.

They have something like 77 (I think that's what the really lovely saleswoman said) varieties of tea - black, flavoured black, green, white, herbal - all looseleaf, and they sell tea-making accoutrements, too. Even better: the lovely saleswoman said that if I find myself in a bind while I'm in England, they might be willing to post me some tea!

I bought myself 100g of spearmint tea to take back to England with me, as well as a tea ball (something else I found - surprisingly - difficult to find in England, although I have noticed that they have been pretty common in Australia for about 5 years). And I took away a bunch of business cards to distribute among friends here in Melbourne.