De Clieu

BORN from experience, obsession and cafe smarts, De Clieu is an example of getting it right. It is Fitzroy's newest cafe and the latest project by coffee gurus Mark Dundon (Seven Seeds and Brother Baba Budan) and Bridget Amor.

The week before last, Dundon dashed to Ecuador to assess the harvest from the country's best growers and Amor was bound for Brazil to judge the Cup of Excellence (it's like the World Cup of coffee). Each year, they make about eight overseas trips to meet farmers and source specialty beans.

Are they wanky about it? Not at all. The whole idea of De Clieu is to demystify the hullabaloo that surrounds coffee and show people how to make a good cup at home.

So there's no $13,000 Clover machine but there is a large area stocked with beans (single-estate from Rwanda and Kenya, plus some wow factors such as the famed Panama Esmeralda), a high-end grinder and a fancy Hario kettle (retail: $7000), which keeps water at a constant temperature for the French press. "French press", a much prettier name for "plunger", is part of the De Clieu education: you really can make good plunger coffee — they'll show you how.

In the kitchen, Steven Carr (Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander, Healesville Hotel) is as obsessed with food as the other two are with coffee. Carr has been a stay-at-home dad for the past three years but has returned to the workforce with a bang.

His equipment is pared back: sandwich press, electric one-ring cooker and an oven. Creating a no-cooktop menu was a challenge but the result is a clever, fresh one-pager, collecting dishes from different cuisines and reinterpreting them with artful presentation.

There's the spongy fermented rice and lentil pancake wrapped around spiced potatoes and peas — like a fancy masala dosa — with green mango yoghurt and the option to add estuary prawns. It's vegan, gluten-free and very tasty.

Spring-onion roti comes wrapped around roasted Berkshire pork neck marinated in honey and hoisin (Carr's take on char siu "without the red"), with a soft-fried egg and barbecue sauce — modern-day bacon and eggs.

Pickled calamari salad is spring in a bowl, a pretty combination of textures and flavours. The tender calamari is pickled in chilli, oregano and fennel; the blood orange segments are bitey yet sweet; and the witlof and fennel add crunch and bitterness.

A veal baguette, with tuna mayo and fleshy fried capers, is a play on vitello tonnato. And the rice and buckwheat muesli comes with strawberry and star anise yoghurt; Carr calls it "anti-Bircher".

De Clieu's fit-out is snazzy (by Six Degrees), with olive hues, concrete, timber and beaut external window benches. It only seats 40, so you'll probably have to wait.

The other thing that makes this place such a smart operation is the staff (poached from Dundon's other shops), a crack team with an established camaraderie.

Coffee, food, service, vibe, fit-out — spunky De Clieu scores in all corners. nrous-seau@theage.com.au