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Where to find capital coffee in Canberra

Matt Holden

Capital: Canberra serves up some surprisingly good coffee.
Capital: Canberra serves up some surprisingly good coffee.Supplied

"There's good coffee in Canberra?" asked a friend, somewhat rhetorically (or was it ironically?), who was about to visit the capital for a wedding.

Yes, definitely. Unless by "Canberra" you mean the members' dining room at Parliament House. I can't speak for that.

And while Canberra has a reputation for blandness, its specialty cafes reflect subtle differences in mood between the various neighbourhoods.

So if you're heading north for a spin in Perceptual Cell at the National Gallery's stimulating James Turrell retrospective, here are some spots for a good brew.

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Canberra city's London Circuit can feel lonely at street level, as if you've turned up for a movie about the end of the world the day after shooting finished.

That might be because everyone who isn't at their desk is probably at The Cupping Room, a big, bustling coffee house on the corner of London Circuit and University Avenue. A three-group Synesso pumps out the espresso, while a Marco batch brewer takes care of filter coffee. The Cupping Room is part of Ona Coffee, so beans are sourced and roasted by Sasa Sestic, one of Canberra's specialty coffee pioneers and newly crowned Australian barista champ. A filter brew of Rwanda Buf is sweet and dark with stewed-prune flavours, while the crowd is an eclectic mix of beards, beardettes and counsel reviewing case files before appearing at the ACT Law Courts across the road.

Ona has a couple of other coffee houses – one in suburban Fyshwick and the other a corner-store gem on the lawns in Manuka, a lovely grassy mall tucked behind Griffith's Franklin Street in the metaphorical shadow of Parliament House.

Ona On the Lawns is the perfect spot to sit under shady plane trees with a cup of Honduran with a sweet front, an earthy finish and less-searing-than-anticipated acidity. Expect plenty of security lanyard-swingers grabbing morning coffee here: various federal bureaus are in the vicinity.

In nearby Kingston is Penny University; milk crates on the wide, shady Kennedy Street footpath, a raw-brick-and-exposed-copper fitout and house-roasted brews give it a more youthful vibe.

And about the closest Canberra gets to an inner-north strip is the, er, inner-north strip of Lonsdale Street in Braddon – home to Lonsdale Street Roasters, another of Canberra's specialty pioneers. Tip: grab a table in the funky-eclectic upstairs room, which features a full-length window for viewing the Lonsdale Street action over a pitch-perfect flat white.

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