Note: Dench has been refurbished and expanded since this was written and has a more extensive menu these days.

Dench bakers is quintessentially North Fitzroy, a mix of rustic and modern, refined punk, glamorous grunge, which is to say grown ups pretending to be young, and the young pretending to be grown up. It combines organic bread and baked goods with coffee, it’s the home-style that no one really has at home.

Display cases are filled with escargot and chocolate croissants, banana cake, bee-stings, and brownies. They serve breakfasts and lunch, from granola to prepared paninis and sandwiches of in-vogue ingredients like bresala and provolone with tomato and salad; roast lamb with cranberry, chilli and plum relish or the simpler mayo lathered tuna and salad. Eggs come poached or scrambled with extras like bacon, avocado or mushrooms. There’s French toast, plain toast, filled or plain croissants savoury or sweet muffins. Specials might be a duck and shiitake risotto or a goats cheese and prosciutto omelette.

Breads sit on exposed frame shelves, dark and burnished, dusted in loose flour of creamy whites. There’s brioche, spelt, olive and walnut, foccacia and ciabatta, raisin and stone, most around $5 to $6 dollars.

Minimal colours and décor give the feel of being inside a panorama box that could be hosed out after a big night. The floor is marble composite, walls are exposed white-painted brick, arty photos hang well framed, a plump flower arrangement looks out the window. The ceiling is half painted boards and a plaster box hiding electrical cabling that can’t get inside the walls. An inexplicable large alfoil dolphin hangs over the entrance. Down lights are suspended from wire tightropes. Noise echoes: staff chatter, blues, jazz or whining folk, clunks from the open kitchen at the back. Distressed wood tables and panelling combines with grey metal, cool and warm.
There’s style and effort being taken. Glasses of water come unbidden, table service is attentive and easy going, not overly fast or slow. The staff are friendly and colourful in personality not dress, all wear black t-shirts.

Customers sit at compact tables along the wall or at the window bench looking across to the Piedmonte’s loading bay and scungy terraces where herbs and bright flowers thrive in pots. It’s not a group venue. About twelve can sit inside and about the same take up positions under red Genovese coffee umbrellas outside close to the Scotchmer traffic belching in sporadic flows. Solo readers and note takers contemplate over coffee. Groups of twos and threes, with prams or dogs chat as likely dressed in overalls as Sass & Bide jeans.

And if you don’t want your home-style out, there’s a selection of home-style meals and dips to take home.

DENCH Baker 109 Scotchmer Street, Fitzroy North VIC 3068 +61 3 9486 3554

Piedmonte’s supermarket is something of an inner city suburbs icon, an easy to access got-everything store, tram-line and parking out the front, central to the North Fitzroy shopping strip.

It has an old-worldy atmosphere, in that the building is sort of 60s and the signage isn’t too flashy. Dust and flies linger on window ledges and it feels like not much has changed in decades. The roof inside is high above, thanks to the mezzanine upper floor, climbed to on wooden stairs where a non-digital photolab and shelves of tupperware, household goods, and party goods gather dust. A coffee shop and nut bar are seemingly never occupied yet continues optimistically. But downstairs is in constant motion, six to eight cashiers will be whipping the streaming customers through from early morning to late night every day of the year.

Wafts of fresh baked Turkish bread and roasting chickens drag you in. A dog’s almost always tied up outside and there’ll be a slightly dishevelled busker. Bikes cling to anything solid and the Big Issue seller shouts “Echh-shoe” somewhat incomprehensibly and you’ll later see him browsing the fresh pasta.

It’s a supermarket that has to straddle some of the poorest and richest residents of inner Melbourne, as well as the diverse range of ethnicities. You can pick up imported French creme fraiche, organic ice-cream, peking duck, fresh fish, puy lentils, fresh pasta sauces, wiltof, baby spinach, Maldon sea salt, toilet paper, lettuce, bananas, lamb chops, fresh foccacia, dutch biscuits, or just bread and milk. The deli is well stocked with hard and soft cheeses, olives, antipasta, dips, salads and salamis; and excellent smoked bacon. The eclecticism makes it a haunt for the curious, but just confuses and bewilders the uninitiated like a spiders web. It takes work to walk out with just the milk you went in for.

In summer its chill is a relief, while for the rest of the year it brings on a shiver. The dairy case aisle particularly needs thermal wear. Sunny weekends bring in the picnickers grabbing extra beer and dips before heading to Edinburgh Gardens, during the Grand Final there’s hardly a soul around, service is quick on Cup Day around three too. In winter its lighted footpath comforts the tired and homeward bound commuters. Best avoided Sunday evenings when seemingly everyone in the surrounding area runs out of milk. In spring the fresh jonquils by the door and brilliant yellow daffodils distract and bring on impulsiveness.

It’s an interesting place, but all supermarkets have an element of interest, it’s the subtle differences that get us through homogeny.

PIEDMONTE’S SUPERMARKET
Corner Best and Scotchmer Streets, North Fitzroy +61 3 9481 1600

Watching swimming lessons as though underwater fully clothed in a large chamber of blue. An oppressive, audio soup that defies concentration, the mind sinks in steamy air strewn with hypnotic blue and white flickering. Splashes, children shouting, teachers shouting, parents shouting, crying, squealing. It’s a warm, sloppy, sleepy place intended for the undressed. Which is why most of the mother’s perched on the long bench seats around the toddler pools resort to child rearing banter, day care fact swapping, and toilet training tips, all higher cognitive function is suppressed, or maybe that’s just motherhood.
The three pools a constant chaos of reflected broken light, stretched with royal blue lane ropes, everything unnatural toned to aqua. There’s a paddle pool, an oblong kids pool about 90cm deep and a 25 metre pool with lap-lanes and ramp access. The huge circular lights above are unneeded today in the ambient yellow of a warm spring day that comes in from three walls of windows. The high roof curves in architecturally metaphoric waves, no doubt intentional.
Outside the 50 metre pool attracts the serious, the lappers, the one piece brigade, caps and aerodynamic goggles. The landscaped lawns are crisping the prickles nicely for summer. The café chairs on the deck lean at half-mast to drain the dew while inside a group of grey haired women occupy five tables for morning tea having aerobised in the pool.
A primary-school tsunami, forty strong surges in, overwhelming anything stationary in its path. Children strip while in constant movement, chattering, comparing costumes and technique, pile their bags and move on like locusts to form rows as though iron filings compelled by unseen forces.
Multicoloured goggles bob up and down on wet round heads, kick boards flick out of the water like frightened fish. Large prams are parked along the narrow edge, mobiles chirp, babies breast-feed or sleep.
“Rainbow arms.”
“Safety entry”
“Kick, kick, kick, that’s it, straight legs.”
“Head down.”
Toddlers and their mums take their first swim lessons, scrambling over floating rubber mats with glowing faces, going ‘shopping’ for floating toys and doing the hokey pokey.
A bored life guard stares into space while around him the confident, physically-fit stride, the overweight waddle, and the gestating move with aching slowness. A group of retired men gossip in the spa, alternating with the stream room, bathers too small for public display.
Bits of rice cracker expand in a puddle by my feet. My head beats to the doff doff doff of a child churning water with their feet.

Aquarena Aquatic and Leisure Centre, 139-153 Williamsons Road Doncaster
61 3 9848 1300
http://www.aquarena.ymca.org.au/home.aspx