cafe shenkin

On day two of our Sydney visit we  caught up with some friends for breakfast. After some fruitless searching for vegan friendly breakfast/brunch places, we resigned ourselves to the vegan breakfast fallback of toast with some sides. Come on Sydney, you can do better! We decided to go to Cafe Shenkin in Erskineville on the strength of its coffee reputation. Being from Melbourne I’m pretty particular about my coffee. To be honest I am a coffee snob.

I wasn’t disappointed in the coffee. But I was really delighted to find that both the breakfast and lunch menu was available all day. There wasn’t much joy on the breakfast menu, so we ordered from the lunch menu of delicious Israeli/Middle Eastern food.

The two vegans both ordered a hummus plate which came with felafel and a choice of another vegetable. My friend chose fava beans and I chose fried eggplant. They both came accomanied by really excellent freshly made pide. Our two non-vegan friends ordered a couple of other vegetarian options, a pastry with salad, and a roti like pastry with a variety of mostly vegan dips including a spicy coriander dip that I loved.

Really delicious. After tasting my friend’s fava beans I coveted them so much that I ordered an extra side of them, rather than stealing hers repeatedly. 🙂  The serve that came was huge and I couldn’t finish it.

The dips on the non-vegan plates were mostly vegan and the staff were helpful, so it would be no problem to organise veganised versions.

All in all delicious, and a nice change from the usual breakfast food.