John T.
Yelp
On the north side of the Prahran market, this is easily the best coffee I have had in Melbourne, which is saying a lot. Melburnians love their coffee, but despite the various dimensions of coffee options (tall/short, light/dark, etc.) the coffee here is a little monotonic. Don't get me wrong, the espresso is excellent--almost universally so--but espresso is just one planet in a galaxy of coffee options.
Melburnians, at least the ones I have spoken with, almost without exceptions look down on the coffee drinking habits of Americans. How is it possible, they think, to drink that light colored flavorless swill you call coffee they say to the american and, mostly, they are right. But, just like not every wine needs to be an enamel threatening Shriaz, similarly not every cup of coffee needs to be a punch in the taste buds. There is a place for a more delicate cup of coffee.
Enter the "pour over" coffee. In this form of preparation, excellent beans are exquisitely ground and both the water and the coffee is weighed out expertly before the sub-boiling water is poured over the grounds just so by men and women who, for some reason, are dressed like 19th century artisans. The result is a cup of coffee, that if made correctly, rivals decent wine or scotch in complexity of flavor. Also, to answer the question of a young woman standing next to me when I received me cup of what, to her must have seemed like dangerously weak coffee, a cup of the stuff does have plenty of caffeine. I know this may be a mark against it, but this kind of thing is all the rage in the hipper and more advanced coffee shops in the US.
Give it a try. There is no better place, that I have found this side of the international date line than Market Lane Coffee. There other coffee is excellent as well, but that almost goes without saying.