Bad Luck Bakery
photo courtesy of Cece A little more than a month ago, a friend and I made the trip to Brunswick Street Fitzroy. Inner-city Melburnians invest a lot of emotional attachment on this part-yuppie, part-grungy strip, and lately there has been this love-hate relationship over the inevitable gentrification of this café-studded street. Perversely, those who protest the loudest are usually the ones contributing to the gentrification. You hear complains about the “self-conscious grunginess” of the commissioned graffiti on some of Brunswick Street’s commercial establishments and the “loss of character that made the place so special”. I’m quite content with its character at the moment, but they’re more than welcome to visit my local strip Sydney Road if poverty and delinquent graffiti is what they’re after. Anyway, one of Brunswick Street’s popular spots is Babka, a bakery whose breads are much talked about. It’s a small cosy café bustling with energy, and although I’m not a regular customer, I can attest that their egg loaf, which is essentially challah minus the Jewish identity, is really quite good. Fresh from my trip to Tasmania, I had this hitherto unbeknownst urge for meat pies, so the beef burgundy with rocket salad and kasoundi (a sort of relish) seemed the obvious choice. We were served a basket of bread slices - a multigrain, spiced rye and a white variety, which were all really flavorsome. So flavorsome, in fact, that we didn’t mind waiting half an hour for our pies, until we were told they’d forgotten all about the pies. I was in an unusually laidback mode so I was quite happy to wait an extra 15 minutes, although the bribe that came in the form of another basket of bread slices certainly helped. Halfway through the wait, a loud crashing noise exploded across the room and one of the waitresses was lying on the floor, with broken pieces of plates splattered all over. It must’ve been quite painful. I’ve always felt that waitressing is a rather dangerous occupation, like a circus performer in the middle of a balancing act but without the glamour and thunderous applause. The pies eventually came and hurriedly consumed. Hot steaming meat encased in puff pastry makes a good antidote to winter, which incidentally is the coldest in a decade. We paid the bill, which was surprisingly cheap, and then we realized we were only charged for one pie. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was deliberate to make up for their forgetfulness or the staff really did make another blunder, but since I was in such a laidback mode I thought I’d just give myself the benefit of the doubt 
