Calabur Cafe and Diner

Calabur Café and Diner is almost hiding under the stairs. It's below street level, in the way some Victorian terraces have a subterranean level, although the exterior here is 1970s brown-glass blah; it's not until you get down those stairs, turning left at the sushi train, that Calabur's charms begin their slow reveal.

It starts with the service. There is room for only 28 diners, so there's little chance of being overlooked, and no one is: the young waiter is attentive and friendly and refills our water glasses throughout brunch. Other details start to jump out of a small space that might not necessarily wow at first sight. The sugar is in elegant glass beakers; a tiny potted plant sits on each rustic wooden table; the table numbers are painted on hessian squares then painstakingly screwed onto little wooden blocks; and the tea and coffee – very good coffee – are served in lovely turquoise ceramics.

Signatures of right-now casual dining are evident: chalkboard graphics; wooden boards as serving platters; exposed pipes on the ceiling; concrete floors and white-tiled walls; and oversized light bulbs with fancy filaments. But if the look verges on industrial, it comes with sugar on top. This place at brunch time is more sweet than edgy; rather than attitude, it oozes readiness to please.

The Asian-fusion food – eggs benedict comes with wasabi hollandaise – does not take long to arrive. Our first dish is a Calabur signature, Mama's egg pudding. It's a pretty thing, meticulously plated up: nasturtium leaves are scattered on the silky, steamed egg custard, while on the side sits a moulded mound of red rice topped with sesame seeds, and a bowl of Uncle Ray's salad, which has a spicy kick in the pomegranate seeds.

My one grumble is the custard is tepid, but it's so well seasoned, with bacon bits delivering bonus hits of flavour, that it's forgiven. Mixing the rice through the pudding gives it a further boost.

My favourite date's spaghetti namtok salmon, ordered from the lunch menu that starts at 11am, has all the spicy, sour flavours of a Thai salad, with a tangle of angel hair pasta and a generous sprinkling of ground roasted rice. Light and bright, it leaves its heavy, creamy, Italy-via-Leichhardt cousins looking a little tired.

Of the cafe's four co-owners, Max Laorungrueangdet is here, manning the coffee machine as his first food venture enters its seventh week. Café by day, Calabur becomes a cocktail bar and diner by night, employing clever design tricks to make the daily transition. Resourcefulness rules in the tiny kitchen; there's no room for big appliances so the chef relies on sous vide cooking for much of the menu, that at night is seafood-heavy with some pork crackling and duck thrown in.

The meat in our tacos has had the warm bath treatment. Generous, tender slabs of chicken and avocado are drizzled with peri peri sauce, while the bed of lettuce and corn hides a second dressing, a garlic and chilli mayo that declares itself once you bite into this mother lode of flavour.

It might be in a basement, but Calabur, in mood and menu, is light, fresh and creative and clearly passionate about what it's doing. It's a gem. 

THE PICKS
Mama's egg pudding; peri peri tacos; spaghetti namtock salmon

THE COFFEE
Five Senses

THE LOOK 
1950s New York bar meets 2016 light industrial