- 23 Jan, 15
- by Anna Brones
- in Places
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East Elevation: The Melbourne Cafe That is All About Microgreens and Composting Coffee Grounds
Melbourne is definitely the Australian Portland. It has bikes, urban gardens and more specialty coffee than you know what you do with. When I visited last fall I immediately fell in love. And it was here that I discovered East Elevation.
There are plenty of restaurants and cafes these days that feature their own gardens, and cook with the produce that they grow. But East Elevation is going even a few steps further.
Housed in an old warehouse space, the building is home to not only the cafe but also an artisan chocolate maker called Monsieur Truffe. No, that’s not a coffee roaster sitting to your right when you walk in, it’s a cocoa bean roaster.
What had drawn me to East Elevation was reading an article that featured their sustainability practices; because East Elevation doesn’t just have an urban garden (they do, it’s just down the street), they have also turned the entire space into a type of magical greenhouse, growing microgreens anywhere that there’s room to put down a planter.
Buckwheat, sunflower, lentils, wheat grass; there are microgreens growing everywhere that you look. Not only can you buy some to take home and put in your own garden, but the kitchen at East Elevation is also sure to use them in the menu.
East Elevation also knows how to put its leftover coffee grounds to good use; they’re used to grow mushrooms upstairs above the cafe. Even cocoa shells from the chocolate making are used in the compost mix that the mushrooms eat right up.
If you’re into eggs for breakfast, you can be happy to know that they come from a few quails that call the East Elevation urban garden plot home. And the coffee is roasted by Padre Coffee, in the neighborhood as well.
Microgreens, specialty coffee, coffee ground compost that grows mushrooms and vegetables from an urban garden? East Elevation is exactly the kind of cafe that I wish we had more of. And that makes me wish I had a ticket back to Melbourne.
East Elevation
351 Lygon Street, Brunswick
I’ve got an even longer article about East Elevation over on Sprudge if you want to learn more.
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Comments 1
ellen sue jacobson
As a former co-owner of a sprouting farm, I am so happy to see that sprouts & microgreens are alive & well in Melbourne,. Thanx for the positive article!