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Just Open: Shifty Chevre cheese cafe, Fitzroy

Sofia Levin
Sofia Levin

Cheese please: a cheeseboard at Shifty Chevre.
Cheese please: a cheeseboard at Shifty Chevre.Sunny Nyssen

If there's a prize for best cafe loo, Shifty Chèvre is a contender. Fitzroy's first cheese cafe was previously a clothing store and owners Tom Petty, Noémie Lacoste and Alex Whyte have transformed the change room into a bathroom oasis of mirrors and ferns, complete with custom goat mural.

Petty, a builder, pinched unwanted timber from building sites to craft raised tables in a living-room setting while Whyte, an interior designer, sourced the spherical Edison globes. Lacoste, originally from France, is in charge of fromage.

"There's too much fancy cheese; too much stigma around matching it with wine," says Petty. "We want to offer light information about what we're serving."

Manager Jack Barnfield inside the cheese cafe.
Manager Jack Barnfield inside the cheese cafe.Sunny Nyssen
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They do this by presenting information cards with cheese platters where each cheese adopts a persona and speaks in the first person. Smoked cheddar, for example, calls you "old chum" before suggesting a pinot grigio pairing.

The menu features indulgent cheese breakfasts (think triple cheese egg and bacon rolls), along with open baguettes and salads for lunch. Expect fondue and raclette come winter.

Shifty Chèvre will open late once the liquor licence is approved, but if you're a morning person and swing by in work boots between 6.30am and 7.30am, Petty will give you 50 cents off your coffee.

The cafe hopes to break down the mystique around cheese.
The cafe hopes to break down the mystique around cheese.Sunny Nyssen

Open Mon-Tues 6.30am-3pm; Wed-Fri 6.30am-4pm; Sat-Sun 8am-5pm.

Shifty Chevre, 375 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 0423 694 763, shiftychevre.com

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Sofia LevinSofia Levin is a food writer and presenter.

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