Code Black Coffee Roasters

Code Black Coffee opened its first big roastery/cafe in Brunswick just on two years ago, knocking the usual warehouse cafe template sideways with a Euro-style fitout that relied on a lot of black paint, rusty metal, chrome highlights, polished concrete and some more black paint in case you missed it. It's as if the designers took the "black" bit literally literally: "Like, how black can we make it?"

Code Black's new North Melbourne cafe couldn't be more different, design-wise. The former car garage is a clean, bright space, all white brick walls infused with pastel green highlights, a terrazzo floor and lovely Tasmanian oak tabletops.

A small open kitchen sits in the middle of it all (below a mezzanine for casual coffee sipping), and executive chef Steven Rangiwahia says he and chef Michael Valentine have taken menu inspiration from that clean, bright space. "That means not too many ingredients on the plate," he says. "Small things that look good, food that people can relate to, and dishes that cater to dietary needs without people having to make a fuss. I've tried to look out for everyone – GF, paleo, dishes without onion and garlic."

The menu is presented in numbered sections, like an auto workshop manual, peppered with Hitch Hiker's Guide-style non-sequiturs ("Infinity has no perspective", and an injunction not to eat the packaged oxygen absorber …).

Breakfast falls under the heading of "Clean and detail". An acai super food bowl ($14) blends the South American berry with blueberries and raspberries, almond milk, granola and a sprinkle of bee pollen, while the avocado smash ($12) comes with cucumber pickled in rice wine and sesame nori salt: "A sushi nori roll on toast," says Rangiwahia.

Salted apple caramel hotcakes ($14) are dense ricotta pancakes with an intriguing salty-sweet tang from the caramel drizzled around the plate. Apple crisps (thankfully not crisps, but dehydrated slices of Granny Smith) give a bit of sour-strap contrast, and there's some nice nutty crunch from a scatter of candied pecans.

Chapter 1.4 of the menu is headed "Engine Mechanical"; here it tips over into lunch, but some of the "lunch" dishes look very breakfasty. Black beans with jalapeno cornbread ($12) is a mess of beans seasoned with chipotle, cinnamon and allspice alongside two long soldiers of cheesy cornbread with a texture more like polenta. The chilli tang of the black beans and the cornbread combined with a long black of an Ethiopian single origin provide an intercontinental endorphin hit, while a side of pork belly is a thick cross-section of tender meat with a generous layer of fat and a crackly rind that should probably carry some kind of health warning.

Rangiwahia says the brunchable hot-smoked salmon on a citrus and herb potato cake ($18) is his "wow" dish, loaded with flavour, while not even the steak sandwich ($17) – grilled porterhouse with fried haloumi, iceberg lettuce and jalapeno mustard on toasted sourdough – is off limits. "I've had people order it at 7.30am," he says.

"It's an all-day menu. If you want food, any time of the day, come in."