Sample Coffee Pro Shop

If you take your coffee seriously you’re in good company at Sample Coffee’s café and roaster in St Peters. You’ll find it in a new creative warehouse complex called Precinct 75 that boasts upholsterers, ceramicists, designers and craft brewery Willie the Boatman among its tenants. And unlike their cupboard-sized Surry Hills outpost, there’s enough space to swing a sack of coffee beans without sending Aeropress machines and bright copper kettles flying off the shelves.

The room is designed around the oval coffee control pod in the middle – it's where the magic happens. Espressos with milk are extracted from the house Pacemaker blend of beans from Panama, Ethiopia and Colombia and cast wakeful spells on a sluggish mind. For something gentler there’s batch and manual filter brews, or get a little herbal and order up a glass of the cascara kombucha on tap. The slightly sweet fermented brew is made from the unroasted fruit of the coffee plant and will help set right the ills of the weekend you may have visited upon your system. Or just forget virtue entirely and go for a rhubarb, strawberry and mint soda. Because sugar is also a fun way to start the day.

Food is not exactly an afterthought here, though it’s not the star of the show. A simple bowl of spiced, toasted granola spiked with dried cranberries and apricot pieces comes with a snowy peak of yoghurt, rhubarb compote and a little pot of Jersey milk on the side. It’s an early morning texture party for your mouth. If you pop in after 9am the menu expands out of the pastry cabinet stocked with Brickfields treats and house-baked chocolate chip cookies and includes two salads, a sandwich and a ploughman's. You can order up a plate of bresaola, ham, cheddar, pickled cauliflower and gherkins, red apple, beetroot and onion jam with a freshly sliced roll on the side. If you want someone else to assemble your lunch, get the slow-cooked beef sandwich with provolone cheese and bitey slices of pickled onions.

There are times when we enjoy the manic pace of a busy café, but a visit to the Sample Coffee Pro Shop is like stopping in at a heavily caffeinated oasis where everything is in soothing monochromes, right down to the Antarctic landscapes on the concrete-bricked walls. When you need a time out from burger queues or underground bunker bars, this chic temple to the humble coffee bean is your port in the inner-city storm.