Sardi

If a cafe is pumping on a Wednesday morning, you can only imagine what's it going to be like on the weekend. Is "pumpinger" even a word?

No need to imagine. A message from a colleague one recent Saturday confirms: "What's going on in Sardi?!" she texted. "The place is full and a crowd of about 15 people waiting outside today."

What's going on, at least on pumping Wednesday, is that a young and – if I may say so – good-looking crowd is crowding into this tiny corner cafe for a bite of an all-day breakfast menu that's heavy with on-trend healthy ingredients: there's an acai smoothie bowl with toasted buckinis, coconut and seasonal fruit ($11); and a granola ($9.50) that's a generous mix of oats, buckinis, sunflower and flax seeds, coconut flakes and various nuts (toasted in coconut oil), topped with pretty fans of sliced strawberry and kiwi fruit, served with rhubarb compote and coconut yoghurt.

"We only have 25 seats," says Sardi's co-owner Sarah Whitfield. "So there can be a bit of a wait on weekends. Even during the week. It's best to get in early."

Whitfield confirms the emphasis on healthy breakfasts. "My sister, who's the chef here, is a personal trainer as well, so we have that covered. We bake our own paleo bread, and even the sweets are paleo-based."

The smashed avo ($14.50) comes on toasted quinoa loaf, while the superfood breakfast bowl ($15.50) adds kale to the asparagus, buckini and poached egg mix. If eating that doesn't make you feel sleeker and more suntanned, nothing will.

The breakfast board ($17.50) is a plate covered in paper – maybe to stop the jar of granola and its little brown medicine bottle of Bonsoy sliding around. The granola is nice and crunchy, though maybe a touch sweet, and studded with toasted hazelnuts and a just-cooked baton of rhubarb. On one side a salty-savoury pea and haloumi fritter is topped with a poached egg (the yolk all running onto the paper), while on the other sits a mini croissant with a pot of passionfruit curd. As a breakfast board it might not satisfy the famished, but it could be the go-to for an indecisive grazer.

The pea and haloumi fritters also appear three to a plate under a tangle of bacon topped with salad leaves, and accompanied by a trio of roasted cherry tomatoes ($18). A wild mushroom ragout ($17.50) feels more like cultivated champignons a la creme, though: a generous bowl of them, with two slices of sourdough toast under the mushrooms, which are sauteed in a creamy sauce and topped with shavings of parmesan and a scatter of nicely bright green wilted kale: tasty and satisfying.

There's a pumping soundtrack to match the pumping crowd, a long, hallucinogenic house jam cranked right up, and after an hour of that and two long blacks – a good house blend from Niccolo – I was in a brunchy fugue state. This isn't the spot for a quiet weekend breakfast. But if you want to get your healthy brunch groove on, and don't mind a crowd, Sardi is your venue.