Friends with Florence

Friends with Florence is a community cafe at 3 Wheaton Road, Melrose Park, a few kilometres south-west of the Adelaide CBD. It has quickly built a local following on two fronts: serious paninis and coffee roasted by The Coffee Barun, and a genuinely warm welcome for dogs at the street-side seating, treats and water bowls included.

The dog setup

Dogs sit with you at the outdoor street-side tables, on a lead, with water bowls put out and a jar of free dog treats that has earned the cafe steady word of mouth among Adelaide dog walkers. Inside is the main cafe room, so this is an outdoor-tables arrangement. The staff get name-checked for greeting the dog first, which is rarer than it should be.

Worth knowing

The menu leans Italian: oven-baked chicken and salami paninis, focaccias, a pistachio pesto that gets ordered on repeat, carrot cake in the cabinet and a biscoff iced latte for the regulars. There is a kids corner, so it skews family-friendly on weekends. Hours run 7:30am to 2pm on weekdays and 8am to 1pm on weekends, and it is walk-in only, no bookings, so a weekday morning is the calm window before the breakfast rush fills the outdoor tables.

Getting there and parking

The cafe sits a street back from Goodwood Road in Melrose Park. Street parking is easiest on the quieter side streets rather than the main road frontage, which makes the lead-in-hand walk to a table a lot simpler.

Close by with the dogs

Malak Dog Park is in the same suburb for an off-lead session before or after coffee, and Faulkland Crescent Reserve in neighbouring Kings Park adds a fenced option a couple of minutes away. More suburban Adelaide picks sit on the South Australia cafe list, and the Melrose Park guide covers the suburb.

Max: treats before I even sit down, water bowl on the ground, and half a panini crust negotiated off the human. This is how every cafe should work.