When I last spent any real time in St Kilda and surrounding suburbs, it was all Greasy Joe’s and Big Mouth. I once sat in Greasy Joe’s eating breakfast and watching Tex Perkins consume a six pack of cheap looking beer at the tram stop in the time it took me to drink two flat whites and eat my bacon and eggs. Acland Street has changed, so further inland in Balaclava seemed a better option this last week.

Ugly Sister

263 Carlisle St, Balaclava

Firstly, at Ugly Sister you don’t have to book for breakfast. The breakfast menu is simple and runs all day (which means till 3 on Sundays as I found out at 3.15 on Sunday).

The clientele are mostly locals, so there is minimal posing. The coffee is excellent, as it should be considering their neighbour: Ugly Sister is across the road from Batch, which is owned and run by 2005 barista of the year Jason Chan.

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Since it has been a topic of late at Beezhouse, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight the difference in advertising for the two competing coffee brands - illy and Starbucks!

Which do you prefer?

or

Don’t these two ads say so much about their cultures and therefore brands?

There is no hiding that the beezhouse is full of coffee connoisseurs. Now we don’t want to come across as the typical Melbourne coffee snobs (but we do have the best coffee in Oz). We also like to bury the mutant Starbucks when we can, so you could imagine our delight when a credible marketing and ideas forum Springwise reported:

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