Cafe # 35: Cafe Kazari

Date: Saturday, 31 January 2009, 3.30pm
Location: 450 Malvern Rd., Prahran
Coffee: $3.50 (fairtrade), latte, okay

I didn't expect to be writing a cafe diary so I have only a small piece of scrap paper found at the bottom of the front pocket of my backpack to work with. The cafe deserves an entry. I'm on Malvern Rd, trying to find a large and excellently stocked op shop that I found Balaclava way with M and mom, when she was here. I need some summer shirts and a bedsheet and I long for a good summer dress or two. I have one perfect one but can't wear that everyday. I think the shop is on Malvern around the Chapel St area, but I haven't quite made it there yet as I've come by Glenferrie Rd tram. It's nice to be in another area; usually I am on Lygon/Smith Sts on the weekends.

This cafe is in the back of a gallery. It's a Japanese cafe. I'm having a red bean, floury decorated deserty thing - a red ball wrapped in green. There is a verandah but I'm inside on a not very comfortable but pretty and long 'Chinese lacquered elm high backed bench' ($3,950) with earth-tone cusions, leaning over a big, white glass-topped table. I am looking at a sweet big painting of two white-pinkish hairless heads in a small white boat on an all black sea, playing black flutes to a sliver moon.

The orange-flavoured water is lovely. There is old-time jazz playing in the background and a loud hum of refrigerator. A lovely, open and calm space of expensive art and craft.



Afterword: I never did find the op-shop I was looking for, but I did find a much smaller one on Chapel St in Windsor where I bought 4 skirts and 4 shirts - a veritable motherlode given the propensity for op-shop clothes to either not fit or look terrible on me.