Reuben Hills is one of those places I assumed was
always insanely packed (thanks TimeOut) and thus best avoided. However one
morning after yoga and not much sleep the night before I decided I needed to
reward myself with a coffee. A really good, really strong coffee. To the Hills!
The unassuming street frontage features a large window with a high bar and stools, with a few wooden boxes scattered out front for good measure. It looks small and cosy, but then you walk in and whoa! This place stretches all the way back to the rear alleyway where there is further outdoor seating. Polished concrete and slightly beat-up (but probably expensive), functional furniture fill the space and a large communal table up the back. The waist height kitchen and sideboard style service areas keep the whole space feeling generous. A mezzanine level holds a variety of coffee bean roasting paraphernalia, and shoves divine smells your way.
I decide coffee just ain't going to cut it this morning I want breakfast too! Thankfully when one needs a breakfast buddy The Socialite will answer the call. We settle in to pick something to eat. The menu here has a Spanish/South American influence to it featuring lots of tomato, spice and pork products. We are tempted by such items as the rice pudding with Pedro Ximenez soaked sultanas and Baleada with pimenton pulled pork and chimol (a radish salsa). In the end The Socialite goes for the Tradesmans Brioche with eggs, jamon, avo and relish. It arrives as a morish breakfast burger with skooshy eggs and the right bun to filling ratio. I go for the soft-baked eggs. The perfectly cooked eggs and ranchero (a tomato salsa which is just out of this world) are baked in a terracotta dish and topped with the jamon and spinach. You smash the lot together and pile it up on your toast and get ready to taste the most refreshing, utterly satisfying breakfast I have had in a long time. I don’t remember much of what happened between that dish arriving at the table and the last mouthful, I was on some kind of astral plane.
There are so many lunch dishes I’ll have to come back here to try. There aren’t many places that could entice me to believe they have ‘really fucking great fried chicken’, but after that breakfast I don’t doubt their claim. Ditto for the ‘that shit cray’ affogato.
The coffee is strong and delicious, the staff are great at what they do, the queues on the weekend can seem daunting, but the turnover is pretty sharp. This place deserves to be as busy as they are.
Update: I went back and tried the ‘really fucking great fried chicken’. It’s pretty up there.
Surry Hills
Sydney 2010
Monday-Saturday 7am-4pm
Sunday 8am-4pm
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