268 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Coffee Brand Atomica
Atomica is your favourite old pair of jeans, tatty, bit battered around the edges, not suitable for fine dining and best worn at home or where your attire doesn’t matter. Atomica is a rare species, a mixture of grunge and rough sophistication, loved for what it is and assertively protected by the locals that frequent it. Here you can find the young lady with the heavily tattooed legs, the clean cut professionals, walking body piercing advertisements, art school students, hospitality workers, and the everyday Joe from the suburbs all comfortable mingling together waiting for coffee in one of Melbourne’s iconic coffee venues.
This place has hardly changed in a decade or more. The gruff and grumpy service (yet usually efficient), tattered aesthetics, low lit interior, dark and formidable house roast, and the retro and imposing Probat roaster visible through the porthole at the back, are all very important in maintaining the Fitzroy image. The coffee is all important here too, and while they have hit upon a style that is hugely popular, there is not much else on offer unless you are taking something for home. Up against the various new, edgy, gung-ho, experimental, knowledge hungry, and focused venues around town right now, the once formidable Atomica is fast losing its hold as one of Melbourne’s best coffee venues. Maybe we are wrong, some of the new places will fizzle out as fast as they appear and Atomica will probably be still there doing what it does best. However the time is right for Atomica to take on the new breed at their own game and remain as one of Melbourne’s coffee elite.
Score Summary.
Macchiato: 16.5, 15.5, 16
Espresso: 14, 16, 16.5
Ristretto: 14.5, 16.5, 15
Overall Mean Score: 15.92. Recommended.
