29 March 2024

All the Acland Street cake shops, from left to right. Seems like they’ve always been there, and as far as Google can tell me, they’ve all been trading 30 years or more. Monarch is the oldest, opened by the Polish emigre Levine family in 1934; they started out with the Monaco cake shop in Lygon Street, which opened in 1931 (pic 3), which they moved to St Kilda as part of the general drift of the Carlton Jewish community to join the St Kilda community. Its been run by Polish refugee Gideon Markham since 1996. It has the grooviest shop window, which looks early 60s to me, and nice wooden shelving which might be earlier. Acland Cake Shop started in 1962; Le Bon was started by the Greek family Siapantos in 1978; and Europa opened in 1982, run by Polish baker Ryszard Janczewski – and just to start the debate, it’s my favourite, though the kugelhaupf from Monarch is mighty fine.

Information from various websites and Judith Buckridge’s book “Acland Street: the Grand Lady of St Kilda”.

Further info : the granddaughter of the Levines told me on Insta that they were Perlia and Joseph, and went from Dnipro in Ukraine to Bialystok in Poland before emigrating in 1929. So they left what had been part of the Russian Empire probably during /because of the post revolutionary civil war, must have been a relief to come to unrevolutionary Melbourne.

And the age in a recent article said the owner of Monarch Joe used Nikki Laski, I guess the daughter of Gideon.

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