burgers, tea and a visit to the NGV art gallery

Veggie burger and chips

Turkish coffee

Oven vegetables risotto

the tea room

the tea room. Notice how every there is expensive.

Sorry if I accidently took a photo of you. I was trying to take it of the water fountain behind you.

 Today I went to the NGV Art Gallery and lunched with my friend at a new place called CafeKeyIf. This place was just opened recently and is near the Medina hotel. A lot of backpackers come here because the food here is really cheap.

I went in there with my entertainment card thinking that I could get the buy one get one free meal deal and they told me it was for dinner only. WTF? They could have stated it in the offer.

But the meal made up for it. There are quite a few vegetarian dishes on the menu. If you go in there at lunchtime all the meals are $10 each, except for soup which is $6.50. There is a cake and coffee deal there for $6.50 but I was too full to try it. Here’s what we ordered: a veggie burger with chips- $10, hot chocolate- $4, Turkish coffee- $3 and a roast vegetable risotto- $10. They forgot the salad, but the risotto tasted quite nice, quite tomatoey.

With my burger I opted to have egg in it. It was $2.50 extra. The burger tasted quite nice. The veggie pattie was really juicy and moist, not like the ones that you buy outside at a BBQ.

I loved the aroma of the Turkish coffee, this looked like it was nicely done. I didn’t drink it because I can’t drink coffee, but my friend said it was nice.

The NGV Art Gallery

Moving right along….after lunch we decided to head to the NGV Art Gallery by tram. It is about a two minute walk from Flinders St Station. Outside of it are a concert hall and the Yarra Bridge.

This is free for all the public to see the artworks, except of course for some exhibitions. We saw the water fountain on the way in and took some photos of it. There are three levels of artworks with heaps and heaps of free viewing. There was a teapot, European artworks, Asian Collection, Photography and International design exhibitions which were all free. There were lots of people here today. There were two or three school excursions going on.

There are free tours on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, but you need to book it at the information desk, near the souvenir shop.

Some of the paintings were really beautiful to see and there was a changing light ladder artwork. This is where it was in the dark and the colours changed all the time. I loved seeing all the old teapots.

But I wonder why there is only one set of toilets on each level with one toilet in it. We had to line up for ages to get a toilet. There should be more toilets.

I didn’t have a chance to take a picture of the souvenir shop, but there are plenty of good things around. Most of the things are made in China. Everything in the shop is really expensive, but we did pick up a few free postcards on the way.

There are three cafes here, but we only had the chance to visit one of them; The tea room.

You can sign up to be a member for $69 per year. Here you will get discounted entry and the use of the members lounge in all the NGV galleries in Melbourne.

The Tea Room

I was inspired to try this after seeing all the teapots and crockery on display at the museum. It was down on the first floor and we took the lift down. We had to wait to be seated and it wasn’t long until we were. Pots of tea were $7.50 each, but they were so big, that you have to share with two people. We did order a pot of green tea.  The green tea was really strong which I liked. There was also a $45 high tea set for two, but we weren’t hungry. However I did order two macaroons, one orange and the other salty caramel. The salty caramel one was very sweet and the orange one was orangey which I like.