There’s a new trend in restaurants and cafes. Design it for Instagram sharability. Pidapipo on Chapel Street has done a reasonable job strategically placing its neon so it can be photographed with Hawker Hall’s neon in the background.
Match Mylkbar takes it to the extreme, from the neon green finger in its window to… well pretty much everything about the place.
The lattes come in all colours of the rainbow from regular to mushroom, pink (beetroot), green (matcha) an golden (tumeric). The burgers are bright green filled with mushroom bacon and a soy chicken breast. Eggs are synthasised from coconut milk and sweet potatoes and look amazing. The cutlery is black and modernist.
Even the water is, ahem, structured, three times more hydrating than tap water, contributes “to the solution & well being of all” and is better for your yoga practice.
There is so much Instagramming going on that I was surprised not to see the Matcha Maiden herself, funtrepreneur Sarah Holloway, a partner in the cafe, taking a selfie in a yoga backbend.
Now I know many of my readers will think this sounds a bit crap. But Matcha Mylkbar is looking like one of the most successful venue launches in recent St Kilda history and a much needed boost to the suburb. It’s attracted to Acland St a totally new crowd characterised by yoga pants, Lululemon and Lorna Jane active wear, man buns and crowds of young Asian Instagrammers.
The service is brilliant, the food pretty good (apart from shoe sole chewy mushroom bacon) and they can pull a long black to knock your hungover Birkenstocks off.
It’s bringing new life to a previously stagnating St Kilda strip whose main attraction to date has been Club X (and the historically significant glory holed Ram Lounge upstairs).
And the downside? The outside tables are under the power lines. Watch out for birds above.
Namaste.
