Next week my workplace is moving from 80 Collins street to 750 Collins street. This puts us riiiight down the end … nearly in the water – in the area officially known as Victoria Harbour, but known to me as #swampland.

This is disconcerting for many reasons, but my most pressing need is coffee. And lunch.

Last time I worked in Docklands was about 6 years ago. In the three years that our company was there we saw many new cafes and eateries open, full of optimism and high prices …. and close. And open, and close. In the end we mostly ate at the Channel 7 staff canteen as they at least stayed open for most of the time we were there, and the food was pretty reasonable as were their hours.

It seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy of top shelf rents leading to top shelf prices leading to low participation by the new migrants to the area, leading to shorter and shorter opening hours, leading to lower quality until finally places imploded. The “hoards” of tourists just didn’t keep these places afloat.

I started taking my lunch most days from about the third week in. (Heck they’ve even banned food trucks from Docklands now … what hope do we have?)

Having been at 80 Collins st or 121 Exhibition for the last six years I’ve gotten very spoiled. Currently there is no really decent coffee, but there’s plenty of variety of food, at all price points, available nearby. And bars for after work. And parks, and utilities but… oh well.

So – I asked twitter and got a list of places to try. I’ll do the right thing – and try lots of places, and will report back.

So tell me where I should go -the twitterati have given me the ones below – tell me your favourite Docklands haunt.

(actually  it’s Victoria Harbour, so no Harbour Town, Waterfront City, Central Pier or South Wharf )

Here’s where I’ll be going first:-

This entry was posted Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Docklands . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.