two thursdays ago, we walked along the tramline through north melbourne, to breakfast at the queen victoria market. there was a jam donut van parked in the heart of it, and two hot jam donuts with our names on them. there is a hand-lettered sign proclaiming 6 for $4.80, but you are not obliged to make a glutton of yourself. a handy pricelist taped to the window of the van lets you know that 1=80c, 2=$1.60, 3=$2.40, and so on. it was a very long list.
the kid face was all smiles and granular sugar. when she hit the main artery of runny, red jam, she seemed surprised: “it’s like blood!”. i was already onto a fat kransky buried in a mound of sauerkraut. i had asked for double sauerkraut, but when the lady brandishing the ladle asked if this was enough — about five times what you get at those twee german sausage stands at cultural festivals — it turned out that that was the normal amount. wuh!
we wound our way into the city, poking about in some of the shops surrounding the market. so by the time we made it to the larger-than-life-size pixar logo outside the acmi, it was princess maeve in her $2 tiara.
we swanned around the art gallery for a while, and then caught a tram to the prahran market. two markets in one day? well, i was on a cupcake mission. we must have found the crabapple bakery a little past noon, but most of the cupcakes were already gone. “i had a rosepetal one today too,” the shoplady said helpfully, gesturing towards a little tray empty but for a scattering of crumbs. the kid had no trouble choosing; her pink-iced cupcake was also pink on the inside. i hovered for a while, eventually deciding on the chocolate-raspberry cupcake: a mudcake base with raspberries baked in, topped with a swirl of ganache.
the boy had no time for cupcakes. and so, with this fragile package in the crook of my arm, we barrelled on, stopping for a large bag of tiny mandarins, on the lookout for the chocolate stall.
and there it was, three aisles down, monsieur truffe. the frenchman himself was not there that day, but a very hospitable girl offered us truffley treats from the array of samples before her. having already done my truffle dash at koko black, i thought it would be improper to acquire more of the luscious, meltaway beauties. no matter though, because monsieur truffe also peddled a great variety of bars. milk bars and dark bars of varying percentages of cocoa, organic bars, single origin bars, single origin bars with cocoa nibs… i was having a very hard time choosing.
but the shopgirl rescued me, asking what my preferred level of cocoa content was, and then saying, “that’s my range too!” when i told her it was somewhere between 65% and 75%. she recommended a few, and brought out secret samples from the fridge behind the counter. and so i learned that this was wonderful, creamy dark chocolate, not at all like the usual dry and shattery french stuff. before too long i had a little brown bag stuffed with four slim bars. it’s not really hoarding if it’s from interstate, right?
and then it rained. and we went into too many secondhand shops along chapel street, and the boy bought a year’s worth of clothes for $4, $6, $8, and i bought vintage paper coasters from a box out on the street. we were riding the rollercoaster of missed naptime, but a late afternoon cupcake back at the apartment made it all better. for a short while.
getting from north melbourne to north richmond at dinnertime is a trial. the tram you think will take you there would have stopped running, and so you will end up catching a tram to a tram to a tram. the kid will get louder and shriller before the jugga-jugga motion rocks her to sleep on her father’s shoulder, five minutes before you need to get off. but it all works out in the end, because dinner is the biggest banh xeo in the world, somewhere in north richmond.
