Babka, a long-running staple of Brunswick Street’s cafe scene, has changed hands for the first time since opening in 1993. Founder Sasha Lewis has sold the business to Chris Messinis, an experienced hospitality professional who is a first-time owner. August 25 is his first day as proprietor of the cosy and intimate Melbourne institution.

“I’m going to go and look after my orchids,” says Lewis, 75. “I’ve given 30 of my best years to the cafe and it’s been a great time. I’m ready to not worry about rosters and machinery and all that goes along with running a bakery.”

Lewis opened Babka in Fitzroy with her friend Frieda Ezard (a distant relative of chef Teage Ezard) and son Niko Lewis, a baker who now owns Northcote’s Kolya Bakery. “We were the first of the northside bakery cafes,” Lewis says.

The women leaned into their European heritage for the menu. “Frieda is Dutch, I have Russian heritage with a bit of Czech and Ukrainian,” says Lewis. “At first, we did everything ourselves and slowly, organically, it grew. Frieda was in the kitchen, I was making desserts, Niko was fundamental with the bread. It’s never been a stereotypical place.”

Babka’s new owner, Chris Messinis, has worked in bakeries in Vienna and Zurich as well as Melbourne businesses Laurent Bakery and Koko Black chocolates. “I’ve always had in the back of my mind to have a unique little business for myself,” he says. “To buy little Babka … I am grateful to Sasha for the rest of my life.”

Messinis isn’t planning many changes and staff are staying on. “I promise to everyone to run Babka the best way, to keep going on with the legend,” he says.

It’s the best of Melbourne, a small, warm place that puts its arms around you.

Hannie Rayson

The original design was by up-and-coming architects Philip Goad and Michael Fink. “The brief was to gently refurbish an existing shop,” says Goad, now a professor of architecture at the University of Melbourne. (Lewis recollects her instructions as “make it Amsterdam-ish” and is proud that she hasn’t refurbished at all in three decades.) Marble, glass and brass set the tone; a jam-jar-filled cabinet defines the entryway.

“We wanted it to be intimate, warm and inviting,” says Goad. “You could see glimpses of the cooking as well. There was no fear of seeing what was happening in the bakery behind.” Goad has been visiting the cafe ever since he had a hand in creating it. “We were there just the other week,” he says.

“My wife had borscht and I had those fantastic mushroom dumplings, the vareniki. One thing that’s nice about Melbourne is that many of these places associated with food become institutions. It’s been discovered over the years by successive generations.”

Playwright Hannie Rayson is a longtime regular. “I think I was there the week the cafe opened,” she says. “I think of bowls of borscht and fresh dill with thick slices of casalinga bread from the oven. Or those citrusy little pancakes with syrup made of cumquats. I think of extravagant roses picked from Sasha’s garden and arranged in huge vases on the bench. And cakes: the lemon tart and the plum cake, made in heaven. It’s the best of Melbourne, a small, warm place that puts its arms around you.”

The bakery has been key in training bread makers over the decades. Tony Dench worked there in the late 1990s alongside Daniel Chirico; both went on to found key Melbourne bread brands of their own. “Babka was a major stepping stone for a number of bakers,” says Dench. “It was a humming cafe with lines down the street for the signature lemon tarts. It was well-made, good quality bread.”

He went on to emulate the business model of bakery and cafe on the same premises. “I saw it as such a good use of space,” he says. “A cafe might get 12 hours of use a day, but a cafe-bakery squeezes every last dollar out of that floor space. Bakers would start at 1am, work into the morning and finish off with tarts and pastries. We’d clean down, then the chefs would come in and work through till 4 or 5 o’clock, then clean down again, rinse and repeat.”

There were other innovations. Babka was one of the first Melbourne food businesses to prohibit smoking, well ahead of the statewide ban enacted in 2001. “We were the only ones game to do it so early in the piece,” says Lewis. “We just refused to supply ashtrays and told people they couldn’t smoke inside anymore. Customers loved us for it.”

Playwright and novelist Joanna Murray-Smith is another long-time regular. “Over all the years, Babka has remained an original,” she says. “Its Russian flavours, delicious breads and magnificent cakes remained central to the experience, but so did the generally gorgeous all female wait staff and the presence of Sasha wafting around like an imperious but benevolent mother hen,” Murray-Smith says.

“In an era of permanent insecurity, Babka has remained a glorious testament to a business that came from the heart and succeeded because of it.”