Rick De Marco, owner of one of my favourite cafes in Canberra, Ricardo’s. Famous for their Instagram worthy cakes and desserts has opened his second cafe in the Woden precinct. The new cafe called Space Kitchen is hidden on the ground level of the newly built Skypark Garage, a multistory carpark. For some it may be easily located as it is right on the corner of Worgan street and Furzer street. But for me it took two attempts as I completely missed the cafe on the first attempt.

If you entered Space Kitchen from the carpark side, the first greeting you receive is not from the cafe staff but from the cakes cabinet. With thorough observation I noticed a familiar face within the cabinet. THE GOLDEN GAY TIME. This is Ricardo’s take on the very popular ice cream that all Australians would have eaten once in their life.

First thing I do when reading menus is to look for anything that sounds interesting. Today at Space Kitchen their R18+ milkshakes caught my attention. The cafe staff questioned my decision to order an alcoholic beverage for breakfast. I told her it had Nutella and marshmallows,  so I definitely had to order it. My milkshake was brought out to the table by Rick himself in a tall pilsner glass with the marshmallows untoasted. After placing down the milkshake, out of nowhere Rick pulls out a kitchen torch and toasts the marshmallows right in front of you. I was deeply amazed and nearly squealed.

The Hotcake at Space Kitchen has to be one of the prettiest is town.  Well it is a boysenberry hotcake with blood orange curd, freeze-dried raspberry, white chocolate crumble and a coconut mascapone. What a mouthful… The hotcakes are thick. But when eaten they are so light and fluffy. The combination of the blood orange, white chocolate and coconut mascapone along with the hotcakes were a match made in heaven.

While I was reading the menu,  the other dish thay caught my attention was the Space Benedict. Quoting directly from the menu, the Space Benedict is a pulled pork croquette with poached eggs, beetroot hollandaise,  pork crackling brioche crumble and pea puree. When the Space Benedict was brought out, my first reaction was ‘how do I eat this?’. As my knowledge of eggs benedict are usually poached eggs sitting on toast and always drenched in hollandaise sauce. The Space Benedict however contradicts this by replacing the toast with a pull pork croquette and instead of stacking every element of the dish on top of each other, they are all neatly placed on the plate.

The other dish I ordered from the menu was their Polenta waffles. Get ready for another mouthful. The lemon thyme sauteed mushrooms, goats cheese, poached eggs, corn puree and salsa verde served on polenta waffles. Like the Nutella milkshake, when the dish was brought to the table, the staff would then take out a bottle and pour the contents onto the polenta waffles. The liquid instantly turns into a white  gaseous substance,  similar to when liquid nitrogen makes contact with oxygen. But this white gas has a twist to it. Its truffle scented. There was lots of ‘oohhs’ and ‘arrs’ on the table when this happened.

I definitely recommend people to try out Space Kitchen as the food is delicious and the interwction between the food, customer and staff are a first in Canberra. But more importantly is that I no longer need to travel half way across town to be able to buy Rick’s dessert masterpieces.

 Space Kitchen 

Address: Ground level, Skypark Garage, corner Worgan and Furzer Streets, Woden

Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 7:30am- 5:30pm