Best Breakfasts in Sydney

Barzura Coogee
Sitting as close to the beach as possible without being in the sea, Barzura’s waiters haul their precious booty with panache, arms laden with coffee (the machine is churning all day long so it’s well warmed up and thus produces a consistently great brew all day every day) and hot buttered slices of fruit toast. Also on the sweet breeze are banana porridge and BLTs on soft, white rolls. But our pick is the scrambled free range eggs with sweet roasted tomato on multigrain toast. From inside, the only view of the beach you’ll have is the pictures of it on the walls but there are a smattering of tables outside where you can grab a bit of sunshine and a view all at the same time. Oh, and you can pop back in the evening for a cocktail.

Bathers’ Pavilion Balmoral Beach
This internationally renowed cafe on the side of Bathers’ is incredibly popular for weekday brekky but it’s a little known fact the restaurant does Sunday breakfasts as well. If you haven’t been to Bathers’ Pavilion – one of Sydney’s most beloved restaurants – or Balmoral beach before, you’re in for a big treat. It’s only a tiny place but it’s picturesque and always littered with well dressed grown ups (and kids, for that matter) taking in a morning on the parade. On the sand sit clusters of kids digging to China while their parents sit inside with strawberry blintz (a little like a crepe), honeyed yoghurt or Bircher muesli (rolled oats, fruit and nuts soaked overnight in fruit juice – it’s health in a bowl) with apple and melon salad. Or go all out with chef Serge Dansereau’s super filling and massively rich oven baked beans and smoky ham hock.

La Vera Café Glebe
For those who seek maximum bang for buck, you can’t beat La Vera. All it costs is $6.50 to buy you two poached eggs spilling gooey yolks all over the shop as well as baked beans, crisp finger-scalding hash browns and two rashers of luscious bacon – it’s an absolute steal.
The environment befits the bargainry. It’s a sweet looking little cafe open to the passing parade yet there are still corners you can hide in if you’re feeling a little fragile. By night, La Vera is an excellent pizza and pasta joint but it’s early in the day they excel: they’ve got the classic fry-up down pat, making it a great place to rest and refuel after a bargain binge at the Glebe markets. Make no mistake, La Vera is no fine diner like others in this ‘hood, but for pure value, this is the pony to be betting on

Good Living Growers' Market  Pyrmont
Doing the shopping here can gouge at the hip pocket, but by crikey, it’s worth it. All the ingredients are hand grown (or “artisan”) and stallholders have travelled from all over NSW to be here. Hence, mushrooms grown in an abandoned train tunnel in Lithgow and bacon from pigs hand-reared in western highland clover. Best of all, you eat breakfast while you shop! Depending on your mood of a morning you could have a chewy Whisk & Pin muesli cookie with fragments of fig and dates, one of Parker’s freshly-squeezed blood orange juices or – if you want to throw calories (and sense) to the wind – a bacon and sausage roll from the Trunkey Creek bacon barons with a chaser of caramel pecan Pat and Stick ice-cream sandwich. Or do it on the super cheap by walking around eating all the samples, pretending to be a soft cheese connoisseur. Whatever you do, don’t miss the spicy beer sausages – they come in a big length you can hang them around your neck, gorging as you go. 

Café Bones Leichhardt
The Hawthorne Canal reserve is one of the biggest off-leash parks in Sydney. Before Cafe Bones started in 2004, people used to bring their own coffee down while running the hounds but since Cafe Bones opened, Sydney’s dog lovers have somewhere special to kick back, get frisky and frolic. Oh yes, it’s a veritable dog’s breakfast, at this mutt hut. Try the date and walnut bread or the marinated vegetable and cheddar toasted sandwich. For your four legged friend, you’ll find Bones Bix (in-house baked dog biscuits) and liver and lamb treats. And, very sweetly, you can drink a cappuccino while your canine companion gets down with a pupacino (the manager of the cafe, who refused to be mentioned by name, and also to give Time Out the ingredients on account of signing a non-disclosure form (!) He finally admitted it’s a “lactose-free drink with a secret sprinkle”. At any rate, it’s great to have somewhere to take your hound where there’s more catering than a cracked plastic container and a short length of frayed rope.

Dragonfly Café North Ryde
Saturday morning is family utopia at Dragonfly. Here the kids can run wild over six acres of adventure playground while parents sit down to a big brekky par excellence (crisp hash browns, roast tomatoes, crispy bacon, eggs how you like ‘em and Turkish toast). Or for a real value proposition, try their breakfast buffet – it’s all you can eat and you’ll find great bacon and fried eggs as well as plump sausages, pastries and even muesli (though why you’d want all-you-can-eat-muesli is a bit of a mystery). The catch? It’s only $9.50 for kids and $21 for big’uns! Having filled your belly to bursting, you can then work off the carbs in all-weekend gardening workshops and tai chi sessions. It’ll keep you calm while you work up a new appetite.

Glass Brasserie Sydney
The first thing that comes to mind when you think hotel breakfast is usually bainmarie warmed scrambled eggs that come out of the pan in one great square mass and those weird little boiled sausages that taste like the shavings from the floor of a circus tent. But at Glass Brasserie, it aint so. The big distinction here is the difference between eating breakfast at the Hilton’s restaurant (more modest fare) and eating at Glass (thoughtful and often inspired). There’s eggs Benedict (double smoked leg ham and a poached egg topped with hollandaise sauce) and a corker mediterranean omelette (fetta, roasted veges, artichoke and roasted tomato) but the menu item which makes us happy as a rare breed pig with a bucket full of chestnuts is the breakfast steak with hash browns and mushrooms topped off with a fried egg -– it’s the shizzle.

The Poolside Café Sydney
Sitting pretty with the sun on your back and the city-kissed sea stretching before you, life can seem as easy as the ABC that gives this stunning breakfast vista its now-legendary allure. Named for champion swimmer Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton whose glorious Olympic career started here, the cafe has hearty steak sandwiches on the menu but for something really luxe (and healthy to boot), it’s hard to go past the strawberries, poached pear and toasted almond salad on toasted sourdough with a Campos coffee on the side. With such sun-soaked open spaces and a pool deck that spills out over the speed lanes, it’s a great space for a Saturday summer breakfast post-swim or simply an idyllic spot to absorb stunning harbour views.

Kazbah Balmain
Pace yourself, people, this is a breakfeast: a fantasia degustation of Middle Eastern/north African-inspired tastiness.  We made the schoolboy error of going overboard on the delicious first course of date and banana porridge with stewed rhubarb and the cinamon rice pud with poached pear, so we didn’t leave any room for the banana and strawberry pancakes that appeared at the end.
Curb your enthusiasm for the carbs because the second course of eggs done three ways on Turkish toast with merguez sausage, haloumi and all the trimmings is irresistible. The breakfast tagines of lamb mince and pumpkin that follow are on the spicy and heavy side so won’t be everyone’s cup of Egyptian hibiscus tea first thing of a morning. But once you’ve lubricated your stomach elastic with a 180bpm tot of viscous Turkish coffee, you can handle anything. Go on then, even those pancakes.
You need to be a group of eight or more and book ahead, but at just $20 per person for a meal that will fill you up till Monday, it represents tip-top value for money. Rock the Kazbah!

Wayside Chapel
Each morning between 9 and 11am, Wayside offer a breakfast program for Sydney’s homeless. The city’s street lifers aren’t cooked for but there’s a fully operational kitchen so they can help themselves to coffee and cereal. There are always volunteers around to hang out with or chew the fat with. On Saturdays and Sundays, community volunteers serve porridge, toast, eggs and cereal. Wayside Chapel invites anyone who needs it to come in and have a feed – whether it’s the homeless or folks just down on their luck, they don’t ask questions. To volunteer, please call.

These are our 2008 winners - See Sydney best breakfasts of 2009

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