Roastville

The coffee, of course, is the thing. Almost every customer arriving at Roastville will clock the impressive-looking roaster in the warehouse beyond the tables and chairs and kitchen space. It stands beside a weighty step-ladder, high enough to reach its top level and big weighing scales.

Half-full sacks of beans, clearly in mid-use, are not the result of artistic placement to create a "feel". The inhouse coffee crafting ambitions are the real deal.

The men working here all have clean-shaven heads. Not that hairiness suggests unauthenticity but Roastville's staff have the air of hard-working navvies with their blacksmith aprons and get-on-with-it forearms.  

Roastville is not, however, a rough and ready kind of joint. This morning's crowd is a mix of families, tradies, local business owners and groups of friends. 

At the cafe's entrance, up a set of stairs (wheelchair lift provided) behind a wall of gleaming green tiles, is an outdoor space for sitting in the sun.

Inside, framed by more shiny emerald tiles, white-washed brick walls and panels of compressed wood chips, is a roomy, calming, industrial-sized space. Owned and run by longtime cafe entrepreneur George Choutis, Roastville mixes wood as cleverly as coffee.

The floor is dark wooden boards and a curving, ridged wall of honey-toned wood screens the toilets. The tables have beautiful parquet tops made from reclaimed timber.

Seating ourselves at the huge communal table, decorated with an engraved metal platter of lemons, we immediately receive jugs of water and glasses. Hanging plants above, splashed with sun from the skylights, have their own pulley systems to allow watering.

A request from the small girls at the table for chips is met with concern. The all-day breakfast menu is up and running but lunch, which features the bowl of hand-cut chips, won't start for an hour.

No matter. Staff arrange with great cheer for an early chip service. It takes a while, understandably, but on their arrival, an air of reverence descends on the table. They are truly marvellous, hand-cut, golden and fluffy chips.

We have already gloried in the coffee. Rich and creamy flat whites, barely needing sugar, are savoured, as is a long black with a burly crema. 

Eggs also arrive, in three arrangements. The benedict is smothered in buttery-blonde hollandaise sauce with lusciously wobbly eggs, plenty of wilted spinach and toasted Brickfield bread. This is a dish for someone after a big, gooey, creamy beginning to their day. That person is not me. After happily polishing off half, it becomes overwhelming.

To balance the creaminess I steal spoonfuls of broad beans, snap peas, wilted greens, chervil and baby spinach, sprinkled with chilli powder, from the green eggs next to me. The slow-cooked, 65-degree poached eggs are delicate wonders.

The winner at the table, apart from the chips, coffee and service, is the egg and bacon roll. The stack of good tender bacon and fine egg pleases its owner, but she is most enthused about the layer of sweet, sharp caramelised onion jam.

Dairy-free smoothies range from the ingredient-rich cacao – berries, coconut yoghurt, banana, chia, coconut water, black gold raw cacao and lsa – to the super-sweet peanut butter lover with medjool dates, banana, peanut butter, almond milk and goji berries. If the weather is sweltering try an RV iced coffee, smooth and beautiful to look at, or a Bundaberg, a nose-bubbling brew of traditional lemonade, apple cider and ginger beer.

The T-nomics teas cover staple leaf brews as well as non-sweetened chai and a hibiscus and orange blend. Bags of Roastville coffee beans are for sale to take home, and Anassa organic teas, worth buying for the hand-drawn mythological creatures on the tins.

Another round of good, good, good coffees is ordered with a sweet and sour lemon curd slice and moist muffins in paper cups. On leaving, all the shaven-headed men wave goodbye before turning to busily re-employ their muscular forearms.

THE PICKS

Eggs benedict; egg and bacon roll; green eggs; lemon curd slice

THE LOOK

Slick yet homey industrial space

THE SERVICE

Fast (really fast), informative and helpful