I love Cibi. I first visited Cibi in Japan, even though this Cibi in Melbourne was the first to open out of the two. Every time we visit Melbourne; we always plan to come here for breakfast. Always. 

Cibi is all about serving food that we enjoy and that is good for us. It is simple, delicious, home cooked food with a focus on seasonal ingredients. Each dish is thoughtfully created to nourish “both the body and soul” as their menu states. That’s why we always come back. It succeeds in doing that. The menus are the perfect size, and that is by design. The Japanese have a proverb, hara-hachi-bun-me which means ‘eating until you are 80 per cent full is eating in moderation”. Having said that, I highly recommend you order the largest of the three breakfasts, the Ultimate. It isn’t overly large, but it gives you a chance to taste all the tasty bits and pieces that are included. You can thank me later. Oh, and if you are lucky enough to be 10 years old or under, the kids breakfast is really really good. I wish all restaurants offered this kind of high-quality option for kids. 

Another reason we keep coming back to Cibi is that it is the gift that keeps on giving. After taking in the atmosphere and the food, move on to the store, filled with beautiful bits for the kitchen direct from Japan that you never realised you needed until this moment and now they become indispensable. We bought a vegetable peeler one year, for many, many times the price of our own, uninspiring vegetable peeler. At the time it seemed to be a silly purchase but since then it’s a joy to peel vegetables and the kids fight for the right to use the Japanese veggie peeler. It isn’t just a veggie peeler. It’s a vibe. Yes, I know this sounds strange, but buy something from the store and you will get what I’m saying. 

The hot chocolate is quite nice. Not sure what it is, where it is from, where it has been and, frankly, I recommend ordering one of their green teas instead. But it is a nice hot chocolate. I’d love to see them offer a dark chocolate/matcha hot chocolate combination, or even yuzu, or even bring in some of the amazing bean to bar chocolate being made in Japan right now! So many options. I feel like I’ve said this before (I just checked, I said the same thing about CIBI Tokyo!!).

Cibi: 33-39 Keele St, Collingwood VIC 3066 Open daily 8am-4pm cibi.com.au

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Mr. Tanuki is the perfect little spot to spend a pleasant moment on a rainy day (of which there are many in Melbourne). Their hot chocolate (40%) comes with latte art even cutter than the various lego sets that are on display throughout the cafe. There are, as expected, tanukis everywhere. A tanuki is a Japanese racoon dog but in Japanese mythology they are also known to be shapeshifting creatures that have a reputation for being tricksters but are also seen as a symbol of prosperity. In Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, they are a deity and protector of nature.

Pair your hot chocolate with one of their delicious Japanese style desserts; either the cotton roll cake or the light cheese cake, both available in various flavors. They also have a generous menu including some incredible looking Japanese breakfasts.

Mr. Tanuki Cafe: 319A Doncaster Rd, Balwyn Nth 3104 open Tuesday-Saturday 10am -3:30pm, 5pm-9pm @mrtanukicafe

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In Melbourne, icecream shops are not just places that sell icecream. They are laboratories that experiment with ingredients and flavours to create icecream, but better. They share the story behind every ingredient they use and, increasingly, they say they make their own chocolate from scratch.

Pidapipo is one of these businesses, and one that does it all very well. The icecream is incredible, scoops generous, branding on point. At this location in Fitzroy (because there are a few scattered around the city), there is large window looking into their “laboratory”, a space filled with creators, creating. 

Pidapipo was founded by Lisa Valmorbida who learnt the art and science of gelato making in Bologna, Italy. She lives by certain rules: all gelato must be made from scratch in small batches only with fresh fruit and no artificial flavourings. 

Coming back to chocolate, the definition of “from scratch” varies depending on the company. I tried to getter a better understanding of what “from scratch” meant for Pidapipo. According to the woman who served me, the chocolate was made in the room to the left, a room that I noticed was full of tempering machines, not chocolate making machines. The website suggests their chocolate is made with cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic but not whether they make it or someone else. It’s all a bit of a mystery, and I’m not quite sure why. 

The hot chocolate thought… Whoa. Made with 72% dark chocolate with a scoop of fior di latte and marshmallow gelato and topped with hazelnut croccante. Only available during the colder months of the year (which isn’t many in Australia) so plan your trip accordingly. Luckily, it is never too cold for gelato here. So my recommendation is to have a hot chocolate, go for a walk around Fitzroy and then come back for a scoop of gelato (maybe chocolate too). You’re welcome. 

Pidapipo, 429-431 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia Open Sunday to Thursday 12pm-10pm and Friday to Saturday 12pm to 11pm. Pidapipo.com 

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I have had many French hot chocolates both in Europe and far outside of European borders. Generally speaking, a French hot chocolate is rich, made with real, dark chocolate not cocoa powder, is slightly thick in texture thanks to both the generous amount of chocolate and sometimes added cornflour. In the best cases, it is accompanied by a small bowl or plate of thick, unsweetened whipping cream, because sweetened would turn your hot chocolate from a drink to a dessert, which would be a shame because one another characteristic of a European hot chocolate is that it is easy to drink at any time of the day. 

I have never had a French hot chocolate outside of Europe that fulfilled all of those points. A bit like Mexican hot chocolates outside of Mexico, they are often created by either a) Individuals have never actually had a hot chocolate in said country or region and are just guessing or b) Simply a type of hot chocolate locals would like but presented in a more “European way” (whatever that means, since the many countries within Europe’s borders would not be more different one to the next). 

Today’s particular French hot chocolate was not had in Europe at all, and the industrial road this tiny hole in the wall café/bakery is located could not be further, physically or in spirit, to Europe if you tried. Yet, I found myself not only seeking it out, but also forking out a small fortune for their take on the European chocolate (much more than most hot chocolates, including those in Europe). This particular hot chocolate was even more expensive because it was absolutely impossible to not buy a few of their pastries as well.

The JC in JC Patisserie Boulanger is Melbourne native Jonathan Camillieri who trained at Le Cordon Bleu and Ferrandi in Paris and then had stints at bakeries all across France and Italy. In 2022, he opened this beautiful bakery.

The hot chocolate was beautifully rich and decadent but not overly sweet.  It had the right texture, the right use of couverture dark chocolate (a mixture of dark and milk chocolate from Callebaut) and it came with the much appreciated bowl of unsweetened whip cream. It ticked all the boxes except one (or maybe two, I would have liked a seat on a terrace where I could watch stylish people walking by with luxury shopping bags or fresh produce from the local market but my view was of a truck dropping off toilet paper to a neighbouring business).  It was missing the generosity of the true French hot chocolate which are often served in a pot with one and a half to even 2 serves of chocolate in them, so that you can linger and people watch for longer. But truly, I’m not complaining.

Apart from the French hot chocolate, their standard hot chocolate is made using the Melbourne (and soon world) famous Mork chocolate so you will be satisfied either way.

JC Patisserie Boulangerie, 17 Henry St, Abbotsford, Melbourne jcpatisserieboulangerie.com  Open Tuesday to Friday, 7am to 1:30pm

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Melbourne has the most beautiful markets. Truffles worth hundreds of dollars are sold next to loose spinach, and you enter thinking you’ll save some money buying direct from the makers and leave with a bank loan but a fridge full of goodies, and no regret.

Prahran market is the perfect example of this. Everything looks beautiful yet is all just a tad more than I expected to pay. But spend we did. The butchers look so snazzy in their matching uniforms it made me feel like was a privilege for me to be able to buy one of their cuts of meat. And once you start, you can’t stop. One stand had the most dazzling display of mushrooms you’ve ever seen, enough to turn a picky 7 year old into a lifelong fan. So yes, we bought some. There is a specialty coffee shop (Market Lane Coffee) offering over a dozen choices of beans for your espresso (no hot chocolate, but I did have a cascara tea). One of the best cheese shops in the city (Maker and Monger) owns the centre spot, selling not just hard and soft varieties but is even kind enough to offer to place a few slices between two pieces of sourdough and toast them for you, which of course we had to do as well (and buy more cheese, obviously). And this continued for some time. I even bought a cookbook at The Essential Ingredient, a cooking equipment store that makes you desperate to run home and do some cooking, on herbs just because the cover was beautiful, and I figured I had already spent so much that a 35$ book wasn’t going to make the difference (the book was Herb by Mark Diacono and it is beautiful inside too). 

And the icing on the cake? Or perhaps the cake and the icing. Within its walls lies a chocolatier serving interesting hot chocolates. And it’s yummy. We chose the smoked Mexican hot chocolate with chili, Himalayan salt and orange bark, an unlikely, not very Mexican combination, but delicious and well executed. The woman tried her hardest to balance the piece of orange bark on the edge of the cup but shouldn’t have been surprised when it instantly fell in, not that we were fussed. We ordered one and took our little paper cup around with us, taking in the sights and sounds while sipping it. It costs $9.50 for a small, $11.50 for a medium and $13.50 for large. They also have a signature hot chocolate with hazelnut praline as well as a silky “Belgian” hot chocolate which suggests that they are using a Belgian couverture (my guess is Callebaut) for their chocolate. A note on the table says they use 55% dark for all their hot chocolates.

Güras Cacao was founded by chocolatier Samrat Karki. His CV includes everything from being a Yogi to working in world-renown restaurants. Originally from Nepal, the inspiration behind Güras’ logo is the Rhododendron flower which Samrat first saw on a trek in the Himalayas in Nepal, inspired by its resilience and delicate beauty. Please don’t only order their hot chocolate but also a few of their bonbons which are beautifully made and delicious.

If I had one request it would be for them to serve it in a mug, not a flimsy paper cup. Like that I could walk around with it, do a full lap of the market and then return the cup at the end. But if they did that, I’d visit more often which would cost me far too much money. But think of your mental health I hear you say. Ok, fine, meet me there in an hour…and bring a mug and your wallet.

Prahran Market, 163 Commercial Rd, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia gurascacao.com

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I’m not sure what it stands for, but I feel the heart attack part is the “walk in only’” system they operate. We make our way all the way to Lygon street, so desperate to sit down in this fantastic little restaurant and busy Lygon street. But will there be a table? Will we have to wait? 

But it always seems to work out, and every time we plan to visit, we do, eventually, get a table (and there is always the “vine” part of their name to keep you company while you wait). You could, and I have considered, camping out here 24 hours a day. They serve breakfast (excellent), lunch (excellent) and, for dinner, cicchetti, a Venetian style of bar food (excellent). Think of it as little bite sized servings of food. You fill your plate with as many as you like, and there is always a wide selection and then pay at the end. Finish that off with a white miso infused tiramisu (which the Venetians would surely have a heart attack over but the Melbournians are more than open to finishing. 

At some point in my 24 sit in at H&V, the hot chocolate would fit in nicely. A thicker, Italian style hot chocolate (minus the cornstarch), chocolatey, infused with a chili orange syrup. I’ll take one of everything you have on the menu please.  

Heartattack and Vine: 329 Lygon St, Carlton VIC 3053. Open daily 8am-10pm http://www.heartattackandvine.com.au

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Right in the heart of Melbourne, Federation Square shouts out with its modern facades…and its interesting restaurants. The most interesting at the moment is definitely Mabu Mabu. Mabu Mabu first opened at nearby South Melbourne Market in 2018 by Nornie Bero. Originally from the Komet Tribe of the Meriam people in the Torres Strait, she has been a professional chef for over 25 years. Here, she makes native ingredients the hero of every dish, including the hot chocolate. This is infused with wattleseed, the seeds of Australia Acacia, which tastes nutty and earthy, unlike any other flavour but bright and inviting, maybe a bit of coffee and caramel notes. While wattleseed is an Australian native, this is the only wattleseed hot chocolate I have found served on my travels around the country surprisingly. It is easy to make at home, and I do this often, but I don’t have this view at home!

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Hot chocolate powders, the kind you stir into hot milk, are not created equal. The vast majority are mediocre, too many are awful, not nearly enough are acceptable. But things are changing here in Australia. We have a growing number of choices here, not just us as consumers, but, perhaps more importantly, choices for all of our world-famous baristas who, too often, put incredible amounts of care into their coffees and not an ounce of love into their hot chocolates. 

This is where Grounded Pleasures comes in. While this family-owned business based in Ballarat has been offering a selection of hot chocolate powders for baristas and consumers since 2005, Craig’s background isn’t in chocolate but in coffee. His family had a café in the early 90s in Camberwell in Melbourne where they would grind and make coffee. He ended up owning and managing the café. “We’d have varieties of coffee from over 30 single origins around the world and I loved assessing the different flavour profiles of all these coffees.” This was before the so called third wave coffee movement and Craig and his father were running coffee workshops and even ended up writing the manual on how to make espresso and training baristas around the country. 

Things started shifting in the early 2000s when chocolate popped into his head “I started thinking, why hasn’t the café owner thought about what a great hot chocolate is? It is so forgotten and these people that go into a café looking for a great hot chocolate just get neglected. Hot chocolate could be one of the most flavourful things we could have.” In 2005 he started an internet coffee business with a friend and decided this was the time to include a good hot chocolate option for cafes. Pretty soon hot chocolate became the focus and Grounded Pleasures Drinking Chocolates was born.

A focus on flavour

The product might have changed, but his focus hasn’t. “I just love where flavour comes together with people and growing things and the different patches of Earth that have different characteristics”. He recounts the first time he had a glass of wine with this dad “It was a chardonnay and I remember asking him if there was peach juice in it because I tasted peaches. I remember that was a revelation.”  He soon discovered cacao was the same. “Chocolate is the most flavourful substance we eat with 700+ individual flavour components while coffee has 400 and wine 300. Up until recently you’d still open a book and see mentioned that there are three varieties of cacao but there are more than 30. There is so much written about wine and coffee, why not about chocolate? In great chocolate you taste other complex flavours other than chocolate and we wanted our drinkers to enjoy them too.”

Their first product was a cocoa from Ghana, “It had this wonderful fruity complexity, nice berries and a lovely long sustained aftertaste that just hit and I thought this is delightful and we should bring it in”. They’ve had other single origins over the years including a Tanzanian (with notes of butterscotch) and more recently a Peruvian hot chocolate (orange, red berries, and hints of caramel). “We’d love to see cafes start offering customers a regularly changing menu of single origin hot chocolates in the same way that they currently offer single origin coffees.” Today if you visit your local café, you may be offered the option to taste one of Grounded Pleasure’s flavoured blends “Chocolate is a fantastic vehicle for other flavours and emphasizes and heightens the flavours of other things”.  Their range currently includes French mint, Sicilian oranges, cinnamon spice, vanilla bean, Chilli and their newest addition, pink salt caramel. 

The Realities of Sourcing

Craig travels extensively to the sourcing locations and focuses on developing long term relationships with his suppliers. “We also need to ensure that we get a good quality cacao that is clean and safe. We need to know its story”. But sourcing quality cacao can be a challenge. “Most of the world’s cocoa production is dominated by a handful of big companies that blend any interesting cocoa with bad cocoa and make a mediocre cocoa. It is seen as a real commodity and the focus is on bringing out the chocolate flavour rather than the range of other flavour profiles naturally present in different cocoas. Just finding producers that could isolate interesting batches where you could taste something other than cocoa was a challenge.”  

Another challenge is consistency in cacao flavour over time. The quality and flavour profiles of the final chocolate are impacted substantially by what happens to the beans before they even reach Grounded Pleasures “Bitter cacao is a processing fault, or means the cacao is not fermented correctly.” Proper fermentation is essential for all cocoa as it converts the really bitter enzymes into softer more palatable ones. It also just like anything fermentated be it beer, wine or coffee it results in a whole array of complex delicious flavours and aromas.  

As cocoa is an agricultural product there are always seasonal differences sometimes these can be quite pronounced. For example, after a few years, the cacao they were sourcing from Ghana to make their African Red hot chocolate, started tasting differently so they would add Ecuadorian cacao in to lift up the fruit notes “we changed the name because it really wasn’t African red anymore, but it is now our Original drinking chocolate and still our most popular”. 

Quality isn’t the only challenge though. Political issues, truck driver strikes in origin countries, extreme weather, there are constantly challenges sourcing material. “The key is to spread your risk around and not source from just one place.” But even when you do this, there are still risks. “Take vanilla for example. Several years ago the price of vanilla shot up from 100$ to 800$ a kilogram because of a massive drought in Papua new Guinea and two hurricanes in Madagascar.” After a tsunami in Indonesia the price of nutmeg, used in their popular Chai, spiked overnight.  “Don’t we have native nutmeg in Australia?” Sophie adds in. I see the wheels turning… one of Craigs many experiments is a hot chocolate using native ingredients “strawberry gum powder, wattle seeds but we are still tweaking”.  Craig always has a lot of different cocoas and experiments on the go at one time, tweaking them constantly until he gets them just right. This focus on quality extends to the other ingredients added to their hot chocolates “We tasted over 30 natural peppermint oils for our mint hot chocolate before finally settling on an incredible one made by a perfume maker in the South of France.” Apart from whatever flavour is added, their hot chocolates include only two ingredients: cocoa and Australian sugar, “we want the cocoa to shine and have the interesting characteristics come out.”

Hot Chocolate in Cafes

I spent over an hour in Grounded Pleasures headquarters, a renovated warehouse that has been transformed into a bright and beautiful Instagramable space where they host events and hold barista training. Craig presented me with a steady supply of hot chocolates to sip, a chai (one of their most popular products), a handful of their incredibly addictive locally made marshmallows (really…dangerously so) pink and white marshmallows and then a small bowl of their raw cocoa nibs. “Raw cacao isn’t truly raw because it has been fermented. But usually, raw cacao is very dense and harsh. It’s when you roast it you start the mallard reaction that further reduces the bitter enzymes and makes it more palatable and brings out the more interesting flavour characteristics. But these raw cocoa nibs are different, they taste so good”. The nibs are gone before he finishes his explanation. 

I share with Craig and Sophie my frustration at not being able to find good hot chocolates in cafes when my husband has a selection of dozens of amazing coffees everywhere he goes.

“Hot chocolate drinkers have been treated with disdain for such a long time and not ever thought about. Because of that, few people come into a café and drink hot chocolate.”  Ground Pleasures is looking to change this and find that a growing number of cafes are willing to have this conversation. “Where we sell, in cafes, is my home, my native habitat. I am a barista so being able to talk to baristas about the hot chocolate or the cocoa that you are drinking in terms of a great coffee or great single origin will fire up their minds.” One of the challenges, apart from a lack of awareness of just how good a hot chocolate can be, is that baristas already have a long list of menu items, including a growing number of different milks and often don’t want to further complicate the situation “But to me it can be very simple, and we have designed Grounded Pleasures to make it easy for baristas to use, but also for people at home”.  Craig invites baristas in, introduces them to the products and how to explain them to consumers. “I’d like them to tell customers about the different cocoas and why it is unique.” 

How to Prepare Grounded Pleasures

One tablespoon (or two if you are me) in one cup of quality milk (or alternative). Heat the milk slowly at low heat. Add one tablespoon (or two if you are me) and whisk vigorously until the chocolate dissolves. You can also stir one tablespoon with a small amount of water into a paste and then pour that into a cup of cold milk and stir for a decadent Ice chocolate.  

In addition to their hot chocolate range, Grounded Pleasures also sells organic panela, cocoa powder, PNG vanilla and vanilla extract and raw organic cocoa nibs. Grounded Pleasures is available at cafes and shops around the country, online and now in the US. 

To learn more visit https://www.groundedpleasures.com.au and follow them on instagram (Sophie is an amazing photographer) .

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Lune is truly a thing of beauty and I am by far not the only one that thinks so. This blog post will be added to the dozens of posts published a day by various kinds of media in Australia expressing admiration for this relatively new business. But it is all well deserved and they reward our praise with more of what made them deserve praise in the first place: croissants.

But no, these aren’t just croissants. I lived in Paris for many years and ate more pain au chocolate that I could ever count. This is Melbourne’s version. They are bigger, crispier, more addictive and just overall stunning to look at (for the brief moment you have to look at them before you gobble them up). You have a choice too from a croissant (yum), a pain au chocolate (yum), an almond croissant (yum) or a few types of cronuts (a croissant/donut mashup) because, yes, these seem to now be here to stay. These handful of options are very neatly laid out on a table floating in the middle of a large warehouse that now houses Lune. Order, take a seat and you can watch the expert bakers, all dressed in white, dancing around in a glass box right in the middle of the warehouse (yes, a glass box). Here you can watch them making all those croissants (yum), pain au chocolats (yum) etc. because everything is made fresh and ours were delivered still warm, very recently out of the oven.

To top off the beauty of Lune they serve Mork Hot Chocolate (smart).

Lune is the baby of Kate Reid who, after many years working designing Formula One cars (and eating croissants in Paris), decided that she had to spend her life designing croissants instead and moved back to Melbourne to open Lune. We were lucky to walk in, order and get a seat. After recently receiving a review from a New York Times writer proclaiming hers to be the best croissants in the world, the line up is often long (and the wait worth it).

Verdict: Book in for Lune Lab (if you can get a spot, they fill up quickly), a three course pastry flight, presented by the bakers and pastry chefs at Lune, which offers an insider’s perspective of the croissant making process, from conception to consumption. Lune, 119 Rose St, Fitzoy, Melbourne, Australia

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I don’t have a poker face. Definitely not when it comes to hot chocolates, but cities as well. So it should be very obvious to you all already how much I love Melbourne. I don’t think there is any city in the world like Melbourne, and I have been to many of the great ones. Not only does it have the best hot chocolates), but it is just all round fantastic. Just come here and if you are already here, pat yourself on the back and thank the hot chocolate gods.

Ok, so the reason I’ve gone on this little love rant is that I fell in love with Melbourne all over again last night when I visited, for the first time, Queen Victoria Night Market. Queen Vic Market is the largest open air market in the southern hemisphere (apparently) open in 1878 so it has seen its share of meat, fish, veggies and the likes. But on Wednesday nights, from 5pm until 10, during in the winter months, a large part of the market becomes a festival of food with music, street performers, open pit fires where you can warm up with mulled wine, and, most importantly, lots and lots of really amazing food.

There are over 30 food stalls selling food from around the world. You can get Texas BBQ, Spanish paella. They have emu or kangaroo burgers, Japanese pancakes or Nepalese feasts. We chose a selection of dishes from Sri Lanka (amazing) and then some churros and hot chocolate at Churro Kitchen. The Churros are shaped into a little crispy bowl filed with a scoop of vanilla icecream and generously drizzled with warm Nutella. The hot chocolate is made from a mix of coconut milk and more Nutella, which is, in moderation, rarely a bad thing.

Verdict: There was a guy selling dancing tours around the market. For a small fee (I’m assuming) you get some headphones and dance all together around the market. We ran out of time but if you visit can you take the tour for me? They looked like they were having a lot of silly fun. Queen Victoria Night Market, Melbourne, Australia

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