Mary Maritin's has been an important bookshop in Adelaide since 1945. It has recently opened a Bookstore & Café in the old Norwood Baptist church which is a very grand old building still complete with its pipe organ. Two other bookshop Cafés reviewed on this site are Borders and Pages. The combination of reading and imbibing in a Café seems to work well.
On the day that your reviewer visited Mary Martin's and Norwood the building was also functioning as a gallery for SALA 2010 Art Festival. The exhibition was Elizabeth Pascale's "Phantasmagoria". These were serene, simple and well crafted paintings all featuring the night sky.
The hot chocolate came in an original-looking tumbler glass. Unfortunately the glass was little hard to grip and was too hot to hold initially, but looked quite decorative. The hot chocolate was finished with white froth and streaks of chocolate powder. It was evident that chocolate syrup had been used. This was decorative but tended to make the drink too sweet which was disappointing because the drink had a rich dark flavour. The hot chocolate cost four dollars and came with a marshmallow.
On the day that your reviewer visited Mary Martin's and Norwood the building was also functioning as a gallery for SALA 2010 Art Festival. The exhibition was Elizabeth Pascale's "Phantasmagoria". These were serene, simple and well crafted paintings all featuring the night sky.
The hot chocolate came in an original-looking tumbler glass. Unfortunately the glass was little hard to grip and was too hot to hold initially, but looked quite decorative. The hot chocolate was finished with white froth and streaks of chocolate powder. It was evident that chocolate syrup had been used. This was decorative but tended to make the drink too sweet which was disappointing because the drink had a rich dark flavour. The hot chocolate cost four dollars and came with a marshmallow.
that's a great review, I also enjoyed the SALA exhibition at the bookshop. Just one correction regarding the hot chocolate though, they actually do use cocoa powder, not syrup, as I asked at the counter. They add a drop of milk to the cocoa powder in the glass, and turn it into a paste, which does appear as a syrup. :)
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