Day 8: Kappy's Cafe, 53 Flinders St

Presenting Bill Murray symptoms after the eighth-day alarm clock, MMC diagnoses midweek melancholy. As we sigh on the Flinders street snack bar strip, the hopeful wink of evergreen tiling inspires a cross-street shufti. A taste for the vaguely vintage lures MMC into Kappy's Cafe, date-stamped 1932, and certainly not a chain store. Does curiosity kill these cats? Nope, it takes their money and serves them coffee. The Order: standard sizes - one skim latte, one flat white. The Price: $4.30 and $4.00. Meow.

Tiptoeing into a deserted Kappy's, we're greeted with a smile and a sceptical sideways glance.

Wide-eyed at the eclectic interior, friend of MMC offsets his incongruous corporate wear with an emasculating yelp. At the bottom of the menu board there are five magic words. Down to his last four dollars, and starved of early morning stove-percolation, he repeats them breathlessly.  All. Coffees. Have. Double. Shots.

Even empty of patrons, Kappy's has an unique ambience. The Shopspace: art-gallery to the right, and tea-library to the left. Soundtrack: jazz. We have a maroon feature wall with some decent local art for sale, and a none-too-clean row of canistered beans for sale. There's a hodgepodge of unordered tables- some green, and some resting on tree stumps. A musty, messy magic lingers. Leafing through the cheapest breakfast menu ever, it's as if we're in Europe. Not a glossy Paris or a perky Spain, but a seedy, dark corners, snickering-old-men Europe. Somewhere like Amsterdam, where 'coffeeshops' are places you're legally allowed to buy cannabis. In Amsterdam, 'tea house' means 'please don't confuse us with those cannabis dens, we really only serve coffee.'

Whether coffeeshop or tea house, the barista is obviously a graduate of the hospitality Hogwarts. First, she turned $5 into 70c. Next, she knows the secret of the layered latte. The Pour: check it out. We realise instantly why a latte is worth thirty cents more. MMC chortles at layer love in the most dramatic of glassware. It's simultaneously  freakin' awesome and ridiculously passé. Lady barista shares her secret when asked. You simply pour the steamed milk in first, wait for the layers to separate, and then somehow trickle in the pre-drawn espresso. It's lacking almost everything MMC looks for in a coffee, but we can't look away.

The lesson: let's do the time warp, but to when? German Mr Kappy started the coffee house in 1932, and operated it for a full thirty years. In recent years, various owners have ducked in and out, and it's still listed for sale online. From the apostrophe-less business card to the inconsistent decor, you can tell poor Kappy's needs some TLC. Are we selling modern art, or are we embracing Mr K's legacy? Are we tall-glassed latte, or are we bubbly mug o' flat white? Take Hyde Park's ever-full Spats Cafe. With a coffee-hungry gen-Y brushing off the family LPs, if you get retro right, you'll be rewarded.

The latte word: A wide-eyed 4 beans out of 5. It may be less 'lost art' and more abandoned antiquity, but MMC has to award points for trying. The coffee has body (tick), but our lessons in acidity and aroma may have to wait for a more form-fit experience. With a wet day forecast, join us tomorrow in the woods for Rainforest Alliance Certified cups of My Morning Coffee.

Link: Buy Kappy's