Queensberry Pour House in Carlton is the kind of cosy hangout I wish I’d had back when I was a uni student.
While my uni days are long behind me now, I can still pretend I’m part of the cool crowd that use Queensberry Pour House for their caffeine fix, meetings and a quiet study session.
The small cafe is on the corner of a main street but it still feels tucked away, its whitewashed facade dwarfed by the modern steely colours of surrounding high rises. The place has a quaint, handmade feel to it and it turns out that the couple who own the cafe made their own ceramics and hand built much of the cafe’s furniture. I particularly love the distinctive sideboard now cash register and their bone-handled cutlery.
The coffee (black, white or short) is a rotating selection of single origin coffee that is roasted on-site every Sunday. The filter coffee is bottomless!
For non-coffee drinkers they make their own nut milk so it’s worth trying the nut milk smoothie ($7) with different flavours every week. Mine was green smoothie, a sweet and creamy concoction of spinach, kale, banana and nut milk.
The menu takes a simple and healthy approach. I go for the grazing bowl with a mixture of quinoa, chunky tabbouleh, roasted capsicum, smoky hummus and labne ($15.50). You can choose to add a soft-boiled paprika spiced egg for an extra $2.
I also try the mushroom toastie, inexplicably called the ‘Vladwich’. It’s a melting squish of provolone, grano padano, spinach, field and enoki mushrooms, spiked together with a jaunty pickle ($12.50).
The sweets cabinet was very enticing, with fresh cakes and biscuits coming straight out of the oven a few steps away. I dithered over the coconut muffin ($4) but decided that my stomach couldn’t handle any more.
Queensberry Pour House is a cafe full of cosy charm, a place to linger or hunker down with the books. The owners made and work in the place, and that care and consideration shows in the end result.
Queensberry Pour House, 210 Queensberry St, Carlton
Monday to Friday: 7am – 4pm
Saturday: 8am – 3pm
Closed Sunday
