Baffi & Mo

Redfern. Sunday morning.

A bare-chested man clutching a takeaway coffee, his lower body wrapped only in a blanket, quotes scripture to two police officers who are requesting he move on from the pavement outside Baffi & Mo.

At our table, a friend – an off-duty Uniting Church reverend en route to a nearby service – is beaming, thrilled with the man's choice of words in the face of authority. Her smile broadens when the scene ends well and again when babyccinos arrive in takeaway cups for her two young sons. One lid is topped with a hand-drawn flower, the other with a heart.

I can't remember a Sunday morning this filled with religion. I abandoned prayer for pastries long ago and the Good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, smote me with thinning hair and a wardrobe full of size 36 trousers.

Baffi & Mo's pastries are found on a counter inside. There are brightly coloured macarons, the best chocolate brownie I have ever tasted, housemade cakes and a salted peanut butter, chocolate and caramel muffin that the devil himself might eat for breakfast.

The lunch menu features a confit duck sandwich with chestnut puree that sounds like his order as well. If I came here every day my trousers would be size 38 in no time.

A Chesterfield sofa looks like the plum spot to sit but there's also a communal table and smaller tables topped with fresh cut flowers. There's an expanse of striking wallpaper and plenty of activity in the open kitchen at the back.

The potato hash stack evokes another biblical reference about the foolish man who builds his house on sand (Matthew 7:26). It is a towering high-rise of deep-fried potato, avocado, tomatoes, asparagus and double smoked ham, built on lemon-dressed rocket. It's a wonky foundation and a precariously placed poached egg spills in slow motion onto the table as it arrives.

A replacement egg is soon prepared and the dish, while architecturally unsound, is otherwise superb. It is also enormous. So, too, are porky Boston beans with chorizo, three slices of toast and a poached egg, which would feed 112 apostles. Roasted mushrooms, basil and ricotta on wholemeal spelt toast with a side of avocado satisfies our church-going friends but it helps to have the patience of Job if our waiting time for meals is any indication.

Baffi's baked eggs with sobrasada – a Majorcan sausage – is the order that evokes the most "dish envy", I am told. It arrives as a cast iron-bath on a timber board, filled with perfectly baked eggs and molten mozzarella in which recline cherry tomatoes on the vine and a sprinkling of fresh herbs. To one side is a crucifix of Iggy's seeded breadsticks warmed to the temperature of the sun.

It is difficult to say just how good this dish is without swearing, one of the few sins I was prepared to confess back in the day. "Um, and I don't help mum and dad with the washing up . . . "

Baffi & Mo (Baffi is Italian for moustache and one appears on the sign) is small and popular. Expect to wait for a table. Sourdough toast with housemade preserves on Sunday morning gives salvation a run for its money these days.

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