Café culture — or should I say Coffee culture is well-established in Melbourne. These days coffee lovers have a reasonable expectation that they can get a decent coffee at most places. Anything inferior is quite likely to result in a backlash and loss of patronage.

As I’ve remarked previously, the standard of tea hasn’t come this far. Far too many cafés and restaurants will go to enormous lengths to do a great coffee, but us tea drinkers pay our $2.50 or $3.00 or whatever and get boiling water and a teabag. I’ve even had to ask for milk on occasion.

Woe betide if it’s a hot day and you want an iced chocolate. Some places know how to do it. Yarraville’s Just Try This, for instance, do a superb iced chocolate, as do many other places. A good iced chocolate should be in a tall glass, with icecream, maybe a little cream, a long spoon. It should attract envy from the coffee drinkers.

The Rive Gauche Café at Southgate, despite the wanky name, does a terrible iced chocolate. It didn’t have any icecream in it. Milk, chocolate stuff and a whole bunch of whipped cream on top, in a plastic cup. They were smart enough to collect the $3 ($6 actually, Marita wanted one too) while the drinks were still being prepared. An old style milkshake in a big metal cup, or even a Big M would have been better.

I wonder if their coffees are any good. Not being a coffee drinker, I might never know.