Bean Counter Cafe

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You know when you see a fly, and it's sitting right near you, too close for comfort, and you're just like, "Are you kidding me? I'm going to show this fly who's boss!" And you swing at it, but it's not moving because maybe it can sense the half-heartedness of your attack – you don't want to kill it, you just want to tell it to LEAVE. As your hand gets closer to it though, it doesn't move, it stays there, sat on the glass, vertical. You pull back, but not in time, and the fly, once proud and fearless, is squashed between the cold, unforgiving glass, and the skin on your index finger, right on the second knuckle.

You know when that happens? Well that's why you shouldn't snack before breakfast.


I'd decided to head out to somewhere out of my normal reach this morning. With the help of a lovely lady-friend (Jess) and her newly acquired motor-car we set off to Fairfield, finding a park on one of the shady, green streets around the corner from Fairfield Station. is nestled amidst all this greenery on Railway Place, but while it was only a stone's throw away from the train line and what I assumed would be a rude interruption every ten or fifteen minutes, this medium-sized cafe is as calm as a place can be.


[ADVERT]We didn't even think twice before heading in – it was the first place we saw, which speaks to the cafe's immediate charm as we had intended to walk and meander up and down Station Street before making our final decision. The waitresses were quick to speak to us as I rudely answered a phone call, but put the evil device down to compliment our host on her FANTASTIC purple and pink hair (maybe I'm just easily impressed, but honestly I thought it was so damn cool).

I ordered the banana, dates, and walnut bread while Jess ordered the veggie grill but asked that it be made vegan, as is her infirmity.

Before our food though we had drinks. My ginger and lemongrass tea was the perfect compliment to our lush surroundings and the dim reflections on long panes of glass either side of us made me feel like I was in some sort of shimmering midday rock-pool. Jess had a soy cappuccino after discovering that the rice milk was only for the chef, not customers (honestly girl, what CAN you eat?) I'm not a huge coffee aficionado but the report was good, and when our food came out spirits only increased as our breakfasts both looked and tasted as good as I had expected – in line with the whole experience up until this point.

Both our meals with drinks came to around the $18-$20 mark – pretty standard there.


I'd eaten earlier that morning, expecting that this meeting would be put off and delayed and that I would be in danger of being found an emaciated skeleton sometime in June had I decided to save my appetite, but I was proven wrong this morning (rare) and suffered because of it. I finished most of my delicious breakfast – the strawberries and yoghurt were especially refreshing in the warm, midday sun – but at somewhere around the halfway mark, rather than give up completely, my pace started to wane and I grew restless. My eyes began darting around the garden looking for a distraction while my stomach settled.


That's when I saw the fly.

I don't intend on making some wild claims about being an insect-ivist, or loving all creatures or whatever here, I'm not that down about possibly having ended the life of a dumb little fly. But it's a weird feeling, to actually make contact like that, when all I had expected to do was to scare it and make it go away.


But I don't think I would have done it had I not been distracted by my half-sated appetite, and that's the lesson really. If I had just waited until the cafe to eat, then I would have been able to give it my full attention, and wouldn't have been annoyed by that tiny animal drifting around the corners of my peripheral vision. So I guess that's the lesson here, and if you take one thing from this review, it's that: don't eat before breakfast, people. It's nothing but bad news.

Oh... actually no scratch that, just go eat at , it's awesome.

#breakfast
#cafes
#coffee
#fairfield
#lunch
#north_east
#vegetarian
%wnmelbourne