Coburg Night Market 2024

One of our favourite Christmas traditions is a balmy night enjoying great food and gorgeous gift purchases at the Coburg Night Market.  The leafy Bridges Reserve is a great location to stroll among food trucks and craft stalls.  The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly with lots of locals chilling on the lawns eating dinner while bands play on the stage.

We had a peak Christmas weekend this past Friday to Sunday.  We met my friend Jo at the Coburg Night Market, decorated our own Christmas tree, helped put up my parents' tree, checked out the Geelong Christmas tree, went gift shopping, and had lunch with Kerin in Fairfield where I admired the sustainable Christmas wreaths she made for the streetscape.  To really get in the spirit of Christmas, I had a crazy parking adventure in a shopping centre where I joined all the cars circling like sharks for the prize of a vacant parking space.  I got so confused by a fruitless search for a parking spot that I found myself unexpectedly at the exit and was mortified to accidentally drive straight through the boom gate in front of a crowd of amused Christmas shoppers.

Back to the night market.  I went there twice with Sylvia and she also went another two times with her dad.  On our first visit we arrived just before 5pm on Friday night just as the market was opening.  There were not many people there and the stalls were well stocked.  So much good stuff to browse.  I just wish I had the money to buy it all.  These Fiona Howes Ceramics green pottery plates above were just the look I would love in my kitchen.

These colourful wee mushroom houses were so gorgeous but not cheap at $35 a house.  It seemed that the prices were quite steep this year but the quality was fantastic.  A friend commented that this is the true price of buying crafts that are made locally.  saskia lola

I really loved these beautiful tea towels from Elvedee.  You can see lots of local scenery: from left to right the pictures were Flinders Street Station, Hosier Lane street art, Dr Who as a cat outside the tardis, Coburg icons and on the edge of the last tea towel you can glimpse some Brunswick places.

This is a close up of the Coburg tea towel.  It has lots of place that I am fond of: the imposing Victorian front gate of Pentridge Wild Timor Cafe, the Bluestone Cottage on Bell Street, Bin Chicken Island, Half Moon Cafe, and the Post Office Hotel.

We smelled many beautifully scented candles.  I really loved the gingerbread candles at the Leaf and Candle Co stall.  They are made in old tins with gorgeous new labels and amazing aromas.  (Last year Sylvia got a jam and cream candle that smelled so good.)

The Nonsense Maker had such wonderful whimsical images of tiny folk hanging out on iconic Aussie foods: iced vovo biscuits, gaytime ice creams, fairy bread, snag in bread, lamingtons, meat pies.  As well as these fridge magnets, they had tea towels, greeting cards and calendars.

We were ready for the Sylvia enjoyed a cup of "the lot" juice: orange mango pineapple passion fruit apple from Jeddo's Juice.

Choosing where to buy dinner was a tyranny of choice.  So. Much. Good. Food!  I chose Nohadra's Kitchen which does vegan Iraqi food.  I had Kuba Haleb (rice balls stuffed with mushroom) at last year's market and it was amazingly crisp outside and tasty inside.  My Kuba Haleb came with salad and tahini sauce.  I could have had more of everything.  An excellent choice.

Meanwhile Sylvia made a beeline for Oh Boy It's a Food Truck.  It is one of her favourite food trucks.  Walking around the food trucks so early meant that we bought food because the queues. 

As we waited we saw this giant old lady puppet.  Sylvia thought she was frighteningly weird.  I thought she looked familiar and was racking my brains to work out where I had seen her before.  When I sorted my photos I saw she is the character on the Coburg tea towel

Here is her crispy mac and cheese croquettes in a roll with cheese sauce and jalapenos.  Oh Boy It's a Food Truck food always makes her very happy!

The Sylvia got a temporary henna tattoo from Alisa Parveen stall.  It was amazing to watch the skill of piping the henna in beautiful swirls onto her hand in minutes.  It took about 20-30 minutes to dry and then gradually flaked off and developed into a deep colour.  Sylvia is hoping it is still there on Christmas day.  She loved it so much that she returned the next day and got another tattoo when visiting the market with her dad.

She had two visits to the night market on Saturday.  One at lunchtime and one in the evening.  By the time we arrived on Saturday evening, lots of people had contributed artwork to this "People of Merribek" canvas.  There were a few workshops like collage and printing on bunting offered at the night market.  I would have loved to have been part of them if we had time (and if the bunting workshop was not just for kids up to the age of 12). 

When I had visited the previous evening, I had liked the look of a woman's falafel so much I checked where it was from.  This was my Saturday night choice.  The falafels from Falafella were excellent and so was the hummus.  You can see how crispy the falafels were and the hummus was really good stuff with a bit of texture and lots of flavour.  They came with lots of leafy salad and some red capsicum slices.

Sylvia wanted to eat from Umma's Gozleme staff.  While my falafel came pretty quickly, there was a long queue for the gozleme.  It gave us time to watch the rolling and folding the gozleme by staff who looked like they are more at home in their own kitchen cooking for their families than at a popular market cooking for hipsters.

While we waited I shared some falafel with Sylvia because I had decided to have a gozleme.  Sylvia got a spinach and feta gozleme and I had a potato feta and onion one.  We took them to the lawn to sit with Jo and family.  The gozleme was delicious and it was lovely to sit and chat with Jo.  Meanwhile Sylvia went off for an orange and mango slushy.

Then we had a walk around the craft stalls to browse and buy the occasional Christmas gift.  There was a lot of smelling candles, admiring cute earrings, laughing at clever festive cards.

Top row: Cuddle the Cat, Ezo Kurashi, Better World Art Christmas decorations,
Middle row: Mana Dreaming, Zedstar Rocks, Kujoberry,
Bottom Row: Apricot Haus, by MHJ, Able and Game.

 

Then Sylvia and I stayed after Jo left because we wanted to see the lights in the dark.  We got ice creams from Billy Van Creamy.  We both got vegan offerings: Sylvia had strawberry sorbet and I had the chocolate and peppermint.

We took our ice creams to lawn by the First Nations stage and listened to music and watched the crowd.  I wasn't sure if this dancer was part of the act or just a passionate onlooker.  It was mesmerizing to watch her under the glow of the setting sun.

Then we wandered around the market to look at all the lights colouring the trees.  Everything looks fun in coloured lights.

When we walked along past the food stalls as they were starting to light up.  Here is the strip of Umma's Gozleme, Falafellas and Nohadra's Kitchen all together where I had excellent food from each stall.  There were lots more tempting food I wished I could have tried.   Some of the food reluctantly bypassed were Donde Mama's Carimañola (Cassava filled with cheese), Salchicha De Verduras (seitan and leek based sausage with smoked paprika, cumin, tumeric tximiturri salsa, vegan aioli) and Hot Twist's Chocolate cheese corn cake.

It was quite impressive how many vegan meals were available in the North East corner of the market.  Another vegan offering I would have loved to have tried were the savoury vegan pastries at the above Yay Foods.  The food truck was bright pink but you can't see the colour so well in the night photo.  The dark made the pretty lights and flowers framing the windows look gorgeous.  I only got as far as test tasting their vegan feta (tofu and coconut oil).  E loved their vegan sausage rolls for lunch on Saturday and dinner on Sunday with Sylvia.  I would have loved to have tried their vegan spinach and feta triangles, spag bol and bechamel pie, and creamy mushroom pie.

Another amazing vegan place was the Elder Roots stall.  They offered lots of interesting mushroom meals: Shiitake Mushroom Banh Mi, Lions Mane Souvlaki, and Myco Magic Rice.  On one sign the magic rice included crunchy tempeh.  I was sad to hear that they weren't doing tempeh at this market.  But I understand that the way to do food trucking is to pare back the menu to one that is manageable in a small space.  This was also the only place I saw with kombucha.  I love the Good Brew kombucha that was on offer but I had to make hard decisions about what to buy!

We could not resist the Finger Licking Enoki Wings: fried enoki wings battered in nori, paprika, marinaded in Korean styled gochan sweet chilli, garlic soy sauce, pickles, mango chilli sauce and mayo dipping sauce.  We were pretty full by then so were glad to get a half serve at $8 rather than the full serve at $15.  It was amazing with really crunchy batter, though I could have done with a little less sauce (which is a preference but I know many people like a lot more sauce than me.)

We were pretty tired at the end of the night but delighted at how gorgeous the lights looked in the dark.  On our walk home we felt good, until we saw that someone had cut the decorative festive bows from the Victoria Street mall and bent the Christmas tree.  That was sad.  We came home to see the Christmas tree we had put up and were relaxing on the sofa when we heard a loud crash.  Some guy had crashed a stolen car into my neighbour's car and the next door brick fence.  It was an evening of high emotions!

But the next day we had more Christmassing today and soldiered on!  We drove down to help my parents put up their Christmas tree and then when we got home, Sylvia went to the night market for her fourth and final time for this year.  She had these crepes with strawberries and cream.  (I can't believe she asked that they swapped out the nutella for whipped cream!!!)  It looks like a fitting end to a big weekend.

Read previous posts about my visits to the Coburg Night Market in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019,  2022 and 2023.

Coburg Night Market
Bridges Rd Reserve
Friday 13 Dec - Sunday 15 Dec 2024
www.facebook.com/coburgnightmarket