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C C Story / Penelope Barker Photo / Andrew Chung
Illustration / Yalan Zhang

Let's Do Brunch!

Australia’s oldest and most populous city, Sydney has a young coffee and cafe culture that has quickly boomed and
been exported around the globe, with “Australian style” cafes opening in cities from London to New York.
Here, specialty coffee and good food go together hand-in-hand and, on the weekend, families, couples, and groups
of friends cram the sprawling city’s many vibrant cafes to enjoy a leisurely brunch.
Coffee first came to Sydney in 1788 via Brazil with the First Fleet, 11 small ships bearing convicts and their guards
from England to set up a penal colony on the edge of the vast Australian continent. The Gold Rush of the 1850s saw an
inrush of new settlers from many countries and money flowed freely. Parisian-style salons serving cafe au lait and cafe
noir began to spring up, followed by elaborate coffee palaces in the 1880s.
In the mid-1930s, the Greek-born brothers John and Emmanuel Andronicus began importing green beans from around
the world and roasting them locally. The brothers are also largely credited with importing and installing Australia’s first
modern espresso equipment in the late 1940s.
During the late 1990s and into the 2000s many of the best-known Sydney roaster retailers were established and a
hipster cafe scene emerged in the inner suburbs that has now spread far and wide from beach-side suburbs to urban cen-
tres throughout the north, south, and west. If you’re visiting Sydney, suggest “Let’s do brunch”, head for a local cafe and
don’t forget to try a Flat White, a coffee style apparently invented by a Sydneysider.
This round-up of five outstanding Sydney cafes has been put together by the team at BestCafeDesigns.com, a global
celebration of cafe design, culture, travel, and coffee established in 2023 by Sydney-based architect, photographer, and
web designer Andrew Chung, with feature articles by design writer Penelope Barker.

Coffee

in Sydney

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