Food around the world and the clock at Lunas in Petersham

Few cafes offer diners the opportunity to eat spatchcock at seven o'clock in the morning. Or accompany that with a glass of mango bubble tea, sardines on Portuguese corn bread or skewers of juicy beef espetada with herby green sauce. All just an hour or so after the sun has come up.

Lunas, co-owned by Jose and Basia Silva, who also run custard tart temple Sweet Belem and Fich down the road, opened last month with an all-day menu of brunch and lunch dishes and queues out the door.

Silva, formerly head chef at Guillaume Brahimi's Bennelong, and still co-owner and head chef at Bibo in Double Bay, has worked with head chef Jacqueline Ektoros to chisel their fine dining expertise into a relaxed setting. 

Here is carefully considered and finessed food, the sort of thing found in high-end, multi-course white tablecloth hatted restaurants overlooking yachts, served in an old corner building overlooking Stanmore Road and a leafy church yard.

You can pull up a black curvy wood chair at window counter seating and eat charcoaled spatchcock laced with piri piri, garlic and bay leaf for breakfast. Or spoon in delicate hotcakes, layered in a cinnamony tower of Sweet Belem Portuguese tart, poached apple, fresh raspberries, flaked pastry and vanilla ice-cream, all resting in a soft creamy custard pool, and wear your best thongs to do so.

Lunas, named after the Silvas' daughter (there is no apostrophe), is in the building once filled by Big Brekky, a Petersham cafe institution that packed in fans for years and led the way in corn fritter stacks and vast country-style breakfasts. 

Silva, who grew up in the area and remembers Big Brekky for its relaxed community feel, is keen to continue the easygoing vibe. He's even given the former cafe a menu nod with a dish called Big Brekky featuring bacon, egg, avocado, sheep's milk cheese and potato scallop on a milk bun lashed with piri piri mayonnaise and tomato relish.

He has also worked with Ektoros to bring Portuguese tastes to the nine brunch and 10 lunch dishes, ranging from scrambled eggs with chouriço (Portuguese-style chorizo) on toast spread with a fermented Spanish sausage paste to swordfish with quail egg and black-eyed beans.  Luscious king ora house-smoked salmon comes with curd, potato hash and kicky caper berries.

"Portugese flavours are a very important thing in Petersham," he says. "A few of the Portuguese restaurants here closed over the past few years and they haven't re-opened. Gloria's, which is the oldest Portuguese cafe, they closed about six months ago."

Co-owner, and Jose's wife, Basia Silva, has re-designed the interior with dark heritage green walls, recycled wood furniture, a Colorbond-fronted counter and mosaic concrete floor.

"It's a lovely old heritage building and we wanted to keep a bit of the old but also bring in new, modern elements," Silva says.

They have also spent nearly a year regenerating the back outdoor area, building a strip of raised wooden garden beds growing parsley, coriander, thyme, rosemary, Portuguese cabbage and strawberries and planting lemon, orange, pomegranate, fig, bay leaf and olive trees beside blueberry and raspberry bushes. 

A retractable shade roof will be installed soon. When Lunas begins a dinner in the new year, diners will eat here in the balmy evenings.  "We're letting it grow into a nice, green area, a little oasis in the inner west," Silva says.

He wants customers to take a punt on all corners of the menu, no matter the time of day. "There are people who start their work shift in the early hours so they can come and have octopus rice or swordfish with black eyed beans for lunch at eight in the morning," he says. "Or come in at two o'clock and have breakfast."

When dinner does start, he and Ektoros will offer more traditional Portuguese dishes.

"It's all what I would like to go out and eat," he says. "And everything's got to complement each other in a dish, be a balance of sweet, savoury, acidic, creaminess and texture.

"It's the same way we created dishes for fine dining. Everything from scratch, everything thought through. But now it's in a casual way."

The low-down

Lunas

Vibe Fine dining with relaxed vibes in a handsome Little Portugal cafe.

Go-to dish Sardines on toast or Portuguese tart hotcakes