Our tour started with a trip to the 150 year old South Melbourne Market – a gourmet paradise and one I just love for its local flavours. This market is unusual for its eclectic collection of shops – from designer to budget, as well as a selection of fabulous eateries and gourmet food stalls. I love seeing where the locals go to do normal things like eat and shop when I travel so it’s always fun to share the market with visitors.
Moshe Feldman is a fabulous market personality and his wonderful health food store Moses and Co. is a market staple. Moshe stocks handy hessian bags which are perfect for travelling and for market sessions so I grabbed one for the Schwartz’s and we set about filling it with tasty local treats and knickknacks. Another highlight at Moshe’s store is Chevra Honey – an initiative from a group of friends whose hobby is bee keeping. Their slogan is sweet ‘from the front yards and back yards of Melbourne’.
From here we moved on through the grandeur of Middle Park to St Kilda, a suburb that has a significant Jewish population. The area is home to one of Australia’s oldest congregations and most beautiful historic synagogues, St Kilda Shule. The irrepressible Rabbi Figdor is an old friend of mine and he welcomed us beautifully, regaling us with jokes and stories on a fabulous guided tour.
Around the corner we decided to pop in to the Jewish museum for a private, guided tour with one of the curators I’m friendly with. The Melbourne Jewish community is a fascinating and thriving one, drawn from all corners of the globe, with a huge survivor population. It was great to hear a few personal tales and draw comparisons with the Schwartz’s own story from the other side of the world.
A walk then followed through Carlisle St with its Jewish bakeries, specialty gift stores featuring Judaica, kosher butchers etc. The Shwartz’s were thrilled with the fridge magnet they purchase at Gold’s which reads AUSTRALIA- what a schlep! Mr Schwartz also purchased some Aboriginal art kippot.
The guests were getting pretty hungry at this point and we had plenty of excellent kosher options in the area – Sushi at Cafe Noga, a bagel at Glicks, pastrami on rye at Daneli’s Deli… The guests were keen on something a little more elegant so we went to SHILOH for a fabulous gourmet lunch.
On the way back to the hotel I took the guests on a brief detour through the leafy tree-lined streets of ‘old money’ Toorak. It’s one of Melbourne’s original centres of wealth and just a few kilometres from the city but often overlooked by visitors. They loved seeing a side of Melbourne they never would have come across otherwise.
