Circa Espresso

We take great joy in finding something in the last place you’d expect it to be. Appearing like a cheerful mirage in a wasteland of municipal buildings and parking stations, Circa is a sight for sore eyes, brightening up the dreary brickwork and abandoned lots of this utilitarian street with beautiful murals and the smell of strong coffee hanging in the air.

There is a pleasant, haphazard quality to the Circa fitout. Tables of decreasing size spill out of the skinny, warehouse café onto the footpath and then curl around onto the stoop next door.

People who aren’t as accustomed to crouching on milk crates and balancing plates on their knees as we are here at Time Out wait patiently for tables inside, with prime real estate found up the back in the library, complete with a Chesterfield sofa and full set of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.

Being the only café of its ilk in sight means that things can get pretty bloody busy here and if you are working on a tight schedule then we recommend getting everything to go. But when it’s Saturday morning and you have nowhere else to be, settle in and dose yourself with the excellent Little Marionette coffee that has made its way from the inner west to the outer west.

The baked eggs are a pan-based arena in which bold ingredients battle it out for flavour supremacy. Creamy, Danish fetta goes head to head with grilled pieces of spicy Turkish sausage on top of baked eggs, tomato, baby spinach and chilli flakes. The impartial referee to this tasty, breakfast brawl is a crusty slice of bread, ideal for scooping up any stray morsels at the end.

The funny thing about many vegan meals is that if you don’t call it vegan, it’s just a tasty dish that happens to contain no meat of dairy. The Portobello mushrooms with hummus on sourdough is all the proof you need. You’ll get halfway through this healthy and filling brekky offering before you even realise that there’s no bacon and you won’t miss it.

Embrace Australia’s dessert heritage with a lamington to finish. These little, chocolate-coated sponge cubes with a hefty dusting of shredded coconut are just as good, if not better, than you remember them from those halcyon days at the school fete.

Circa Espresso is bringing some village vibes to Sydney’s geographic centre and if a few more like it were to spring up, that would be more than OK with us.