Buckley

Julien Moussi, with various partners, runs Melbourne’s largest non-franchised cafe group. There are more than a dozen in the family, including Bentwood in Fitzroy, Nelson in Box Hill, Clubhouse in Malvern and six locations of the bakery Juliette.

Buckley was added to the family in 2021 and named in honour of an earlier incarnation of the site, Buckley’s Chance, which sold pancakes and milkshakes.

The former espresso machine is gone. Moussi replaced it with a shiny new Slayer, fed by beans from his own Inglewood Coffee Roasters, which resides in a 3000-square-metre home in Glen Waverley. Cold brew, bottomless batch brew, chai, turmeric and matcha lattes are also available.

The food menu is identical to those at sister cafes Bentwood and Stanley. There’s chilli scrambled eggs, churro waffles with ice-cream, cauliflower and haloumi fritters, eggs Benedict with braised beef brisket, a barbeque beef burger and plenty of iterations of things on toast. A separate kids’ menu contains three choices.

Whether you visit with kids or bring friends and get stuck into the menu of Bloody Marys, Mimosas, Espresso Martinis and Aperol Spritzes, the large outdoor seating area remains the place to be, as it was at Buckley’s Chance.