The best cafés in Surry Hills

Go here for: Some of the best brews this side of Central

This Surry Hills mainstay takes a two-pronged approach to improving your morning – grab a takeaway coffee from the espresso bar, or take your time and hoe into the full breakfast and coffee menu at the sit-down café further up Reservoir Street. Coffee is their main game here, and the menu of both caffeinated beverages and eats is dynamic and fun – there are pour overs and Aeropress coffees, and healthful bowls or bacon and egg rolls. 

Go here for: A cracking brekky, bread, pies, and pastries

Hungry and thirsty in th 2010 postcode? Beeline it to A.P Bakery, the excellent bakery and café located on the rooftop of the Paramount House Hotel. You seriously can't go wrong here. So throw caution to the wind and order a brekky plate, LP's smoked brisket pie, and a fig, almond, and ricotta tart to go. Get here as early as you can as the lines can be long at peak times.

Go here for: A ripper cup of coffee made using Gypsy Espresso beans, plus a leg ham and gruyère toasted sandwich with seeded mustard aioli

Berto’s Espresso is a lovely little corner café on Crown Street. The exterior is painted a soft butter yellow colour, evoking slow and sunny mornings – just how we like them. Co-owner and operator Robert Salas has more than 12 years of experience under his belt at top Sydney spots like Gypsy Espresso and Flour & Stone, where his passion for all things espresso was well and truly cemented. Take a seat outside and enjoy an excellent brew.

Go here for: Sydney's most famous breakfast dishes: the ricotta hotcakes and corn fritters

Sometimes you drag yourself to a café to cure a hangover with bacon, and other times brunch is an event, which is when you go to Bills. Dress up, aim for one of the window seats and embrace a little breakfast cocktail – everyone is doing it here so you’ll get no side eye. This is the number one spot for American style-brunching with booze, where your perfectly poached eggs are served in a light, bright, elegant space.

Go here for: The huevos divorciados – it’s somewhere between a taco and a breakfast sandwich

Reuben Hills is the kind of place that is always three quarters full no matter when you visit, partly due to their house-roasted coffee, and partly due to the appeal of the Central American flourishes on the menu, the result of their coffee sourcing trips to the region. The breakfast options are great, too.

Go here for: A pink fingerbun and salami focaccia sambo

Humble is the cult bakery and café on Holt Street from the all-star team behind Porteño, Bodega and Bastardo, which all happen to be found on the same strip (if this was a game of Monopoly, the Porteño group would be making it rain). Humble’s take on the finger bun earns one big giant tick: the bread is soft, pillowy and spiked with dried fruit, with ribbons of pink icing piped perfectly on top, and a thick layer of salted butter in the middle. At $7.50, it costs more than the ones from Baker’s Delight, however, it’s nostalgic and elevated all at once (and we can easily still get it down in three seconds).

Go here for: The perfect summer brekky

When Four Ate Five opened in 2010, Time Out gave it our first-ever five-star rating for a café. And after all these years, it's still going strong. The 485 breakfast plate is a satisfying Middle Eastern-inspired dish made up of sour, salty, and spicy elements. Dig into a boiled egg, house-made falafel, chopped salad, pickles, charred eggplant and capsicum salsa, pickled chilli, cabbage, tzatziki with mint oil, and chilli hummus with your choice of pita or bagel.

Go here for: One of Sydney's best pies

Pies are serious business, and the ones coming out of this pastel-pink pastry shop and café are top-notch. The beef and mushroom number is our pick. Think: a umami-rich and unctuous filling featuring hunks of meat and 'shrooms, encased in a perfect flaky, buttery and bronzed pastry. If it's on the menu that day, the blueberry tart also slaps.

Go here for: Left-of-centre breakfasts in the precinct of cool

Located within one of the hippest buildings in Surry Hills (you’ll find Golden Age Cinema downstairs and A.P. Bakery upstairs), this bright café delivers a menu that manages to straddle both America’s deep south and Japan’s urban precincts. There's floral displays warming up the slick concrete floors, a '90s hip hop soundtrack and an intricate, coffee-nerd pleasing menu. 

Go here for: A dose of coffee nerdiness

Like the mystical wardrobe to Narnia, Sample Coffee is a cupboard-sized portal to a whole new dimension of caffeinated bliss. This Surry Hills coffee nook serves up excellent espresso and their miso cookie is a must for your mornining treat.

Go here for: The sausage rolls and a sweet and milky iced coffee

You'll find Bourke Street Bakeries right across Sydney, but its flagship is in the centre of Surry Hills. The corner bakery is never empty – locals file in at 7am for olive oil loaves, at midday for a beef brisket pie accompanied by chocolate milk and at 3pm for an afternoon caffeine hit (and it's worth noting they are open till 6pm, making it one of the few places in Surry Hills that you can get a late arvo latte).

Go here for: A team lunch or catch-up with a group of friends – their tables fit large groups

Found on the corner of Buckingham Street, Cook & Archies Café is a relaxed, family-owned spot that has been a fixture in the Surry Hills community for more than 20 years. The Mediterranean-leaning menu features hearty breakfast and lunch options, along with a solid selection of delicious sandwiches and fresh, vibrant salads for those on the go. Our pick: the Reuben sandwich loaded with Black Angus corned beef, Swiss cheese, slaw, and Russian dressing on rye. It's a close-your-eyes kinda sambo.

Go here for: Creative plant-based eating

Surry Hills has long had Yulli’s to cover your veggo nights out, but there’s a daytime destination in the Shift Eatery, a vegan café and delicatessen peddling super sandwiches, tiny sweet treats and solid coffee. There are eight sarnies on the menu that use meat and mayo substitutes, many of which are inspired by popular carnivorous favourites. The ‘join the club’ piles up “chicken” schnitzel, “turkey” slices  and “cheddar cheese”.

Go here for: Prime people watching at a Crown Street institution

This Crown Street staple has been pumping out chicken meatball sandwiches, freshly squeezed juices and Little Marionette coffees for more than 20 years, which is a serious lifetime in café years. The sharehouse-meets-farmhouse furnishing vibe runs right through the wide, street fronted café. Service is very friendly, and they do both all day breakfasts and lunches, so you’ll never get menu-FOMO.

Come here for: Turkish-inspired eats and an iced Turkish coffee

Look, bacon and eggs are good. Great, even. A morning staple. But when we see Turkish chilli scrambled eggs with sweet housemade tomato chutney, peppers and crusty bread on a menu, or fried eggs with spicy beef sausage, crunchy cucumber, sweet tomato, creamy feta, tahini and more on Turkish bread, we're getting that. Turkish bakery and café Malika Bakehouse is slinging these delicious things and more.

Go here for: An on-point cup of Joe

Melburnian coffee roasters Veneziano Coffee have put their mark on the coffee lovin' suburb of Surry Hills, by the way of a café and brew house on Bourke Street. They've been roasting beans for more than 20 years and they share their knowledge of the black gold via classes and workshops in their ultra modern training facilities. If you just want to drink their coffee, you'll find a fully functioning espresso bar, plus pared back concrete interiors and tasty pastries and baked goods from Shortstop. 

Go here for: Matcha treats

This Japanese-influenced hot spot has made its mark in the suburb’s (almost) saturated café scene with an inventive menu that features a lobster congee and croissant with crab and egg salad. The lava French toast has the centre carved out and filled with creamy matcha ganache. You dress the toast box with condensed milk which complements the bright, unadulterated flavours of green tea.

Go here for: Croissants dipped in melted chocolate

It's a teeny-tiny space – just a hole in the wall with a few benches outside. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in attention to detail, because as you'd expect, the coffee here is some of the best in Surry Hills: smooth, rich, balanced and smoky. They serve very few snacks, but there’s gluten-free, dairy-free doughnuts or fresh croissants that you can dip in a pot of melted chocolate for some extra cash.

Go here for: Coffee

Artificer is not about cake. It's not about sandwiches or even a nice cup of tea. Artificer is about one thing: coffee. That's all they sell. Co-owners Shoji Sasa and Dan Yee are sourcing the beans themselves and roasting them onsite, and what they don't know about beans isn't worth knowing. 

Go here for: Café classics

You know what the mark of a good café is? Asking if you’d like your bacon crispy, with no provocation. These guys have been cranking out the goods for years now, and while the room is still the somewhat utilitarian, high-ceilinged space lined in dark timber finishes, the coffee and eats never fail to get the job done.

Go here for: Coffee and a sanga loaded with spicy meatballs

This little bolthole next to the Hotel Hollywood is like an external battery pack for Surry Hills office workers who come in for a re-up before meetings, after meetings, and just because they haven’t stood up in a while.