Enlightened, four times over

On Thursday, I was enlightened four times.

Together with 2 of my friends, I was bookshop-hopping in Melbourne in search for some decent maps for our upcoming holiday. When we finally got what we wanted, we discovered that we were hungry. Since we were in the travel section of the book store, it made perfect sense to check out “Melbourne” on the Lonely Planet guide books for something good to eat.


On the first Wednesday of July, we had watched Mama Mia! the musical. It was a brilliant production, and I opine that everyone should watch it at least once before dying. Before the show, we walked around the vicinity of the theatre, and saw a small bar of sorts. It looked like a coffee bar. We vowed to return.


In the Lonely Planet guide, we found this same outlet, Pelligrini’s Bar. The espresso came highly recommended. Very well, we would go there.

For the sake of sampling something new, I ordered spaghetti saltati. For some reason, I had never ordered espresso before. This would be another first. One particular drink that was popular was a pinkish concoction of ice and liquid slurry. We ordered that too.

The spaghetti saltati was brilliant. Best pasta I had in a long while/ever.

The espresso was an eye opener, in all senses of the phrase. As a friend remarked, “this is very pure coffee.”

The pinkish slurry turned out to be watermelon granita with a dash of lemon. Granita is “a coarse Italian-style water ice” (Oxford English Dictionary). It was a good drink.

The bill came to a rather hefty A$20.