Proud Mary
The espresso machine is two three-group Synessos welded into one six-group, so every single origin on the bar has an extractor to itself and comes out tasting like nothing but itself.
Why go
Nolan Hirte sold Liar Liar to St. ALi and opened this in November 2009, and Broadsheet was in the room four hours after the doors went up (Broadsheet). The kit he bought then reads like a manifesto: a syphon bar, a wall of grinders, two Clovers at a time when Starbucks had bought the maker and pulled them off the market, and the six-group. Proud Mary roasts the beans a block away at Aunty Peg's and pours the same coffee as cold drip, V60, AeroPress or espresso rather than forcing it through one house method (Broadsheet). Melbourne is a coffee city because of roasters like this one, and this is the roaster-owned version rather than the chain version.
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever single origin is on, as filter. Then the house blend as espresso if you want to taste the roast instead of the farm. The kitchen runs a full menu, and the ricotta hotcakes with cardamom-spiked sour cream are the one that has been on longest.
- Avoid: treating it as a quick takeaway stop. Broadsheet's own line is that
there's almost always a few local residents or workers hanging around the entrance waiting to score
2. Everything is shut by 3pm.
What locals & experts say
- Broadsheet, on the machine (venue page): the six-group exists so that each single origin has its own extractor,
ensuring it tastes like nothing but itself.
2 - Nick Shelton, Broadsheet's founder, on opening week in 2009:
The area is by no means short of cafes, but there has been a conspicuous lack of great coffee - until now.
That is an opening report, and it is seventeen years old.1 - The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops: 4th in the inaugural edition per Broadsheet, and 27th in the current one, filed at 172 Oxford St. The guide says its own process mixes public voting with a panel of specialty coffee professionals, so read it as a popularity-and-panel list, not a critic's verdict.3
- Nobody with a byline has judged the coffee. Good Food, Time Out Melbourne and the Broadsheet coffee beat were searched on 1 August 2026 and none carries a review of this room. None of the 74 chef picks in the Melbourne corpus names it either. The rung rests on the equipment and the roastery.
Good to know
- Where: 172 Oxford St, Collingwood, just off Smith Street. The roastery, Aunty Peg's, is a block away and is its own venue.
- Timing: 7am to 3pm weekdays, 8am to 3pm weekends. No evening trade.
- Booking: walk-in.
- Food safety: Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions, the state's only public food-safety record, carries no entry for this business as at its 21 July 2026 update.5
- Near MCEC: no. Collingwood, about 4km from South Wharf.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: A top coffee shop
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour for the coffee, on craft investment rather than on anyone's say-so. Nolan Hirte opened this in November 2009 with a six-group Synesso welded together out of two three-groups, and the reason is the one a chef cares about: every single origin gets its own extractor so nothing carries the taste of the last coffee through it. The beans are roasted a block away at Aunty Peg's, and they are brewed as cold drip, V60, AeroPress or espresso rather than one house method. That is Melbourne's defining food culture done by a roaster rather than a chain, which is what the city signature actually asks for. It stops short of must-visit because nobody with a name has judged a cup: no critic review we can reach, and not one of the 74 Melbourne chef picks points here. The world guide placing is real and it is partly a popularity vote, so it is recorded and not leaned on.