The duo behind Happyfield have opened a sunshine-yellow sibling, where you can get chopped cheese sandwiches and sugar-dusted beignets.
Happyfield cafe in Haberfield is best known for its towering, fluffy pancake stacks. But next door, at its newly opened sibling venue, the signature dish is something altogether different: New Orleans-style beignets, deep-fried, heavily sugared and unapologetically messy.
“I don’t know of anywhere else in Sydney where you can get fresh, hot beignets straight from the fryer,” says Chris Theodosi, who owns and runs Happy Shop with chef Jesse Orleans.
Beignets are golden, pillowy pastries of French origin, with strong ties to New Orleans cuisine. The beignets at Happy Shop are made by hand from a yeasted, laminated dough, fried in hot oil, then finished with a snowfall of icing sugar.
“They’re little pillows of heaven,” Theodosi says. “But they can make a mess of your shirt. It’s pretty obvious when you’ve had one.”
Happy Shop has opened its sunshine-yellow doors on Ramsay Street in Haberfield, directly next door to Happyfield, a former Good Food Guide Cafe of the Year.
Described by Theodosi as a “fancy fast food-cafe-restaurant hybrid”, the new venue has its own concept and menu but feels unmistakably part of the same family.
Happyfield has long often drawn comparisons to McDonald’s, thanks to its cheerful yellow colour scheme and menu, which includes hotcakes, brekkie muffins and hash browns that you can get bundled together in the “Happiest Meal”.
Happy Shop takes the idea a step further, adopting a fast-casual model that includes a service window for ordering, payment and pick-up and a self-serve drinks station. It also has a strong emphasis on takeaway.
Dine-in orders arrive on yellow paper-lined trays, while takeaway is packed into custom bags illustrated with a new cast of “Happy Friends”, including smiling fries, a waving burger and a jogging hash brown.
The menu leans into American comfort foods, with a selection of breakfast muffins, sandwiches, burgers and salads.
Leading the sandwich line-up is the chopped cheese – a New York bodega staple – made with a Whole Beef Butchery burger patty, beef pastrami and American cheese, chopped together on the grill and piled into a sesame roll with onion, lettuce, mayo and adobo seasoning.
It’s joined by a fried chicken sandwich, stacked with Cajun-spiced tenders, iceberg lettuce and Louisiana remoulade on shokupan supplied by Lode in Rozelle, and the Italian Job – a deli sandwich of sopressa, mortadella and coppa layered with stracciatella and basil romesco – a nod to Haberfield’s Italian roots.
There are also playful homages to Macca’s classics. There’s a Big Mac dupe, the BIG Happy, which replicates the ingredients, sauce and three-tiered structure of the original, and the Le Griddle, which riffs on the McGriddle, swapping the muffin buns for two maple syrup-infused pancakes.
Coffee is taken seriously. There’s an espresso machine for hot coffees, and a slushie machine for ice-cold coffee slushies. A self-serve station lets customers pour their own cold brew and batch brew, as well as iced matcha and homemade lemonade.
Seating is outdoors on a fully covered terrace, designed to evoke an old school Los Angeles fast-food joint – “like a fast-food restaurant from the ’50s, before it was franchised”, Theodosi says.
The hope is that Happy Shop will help ease the pressure on Happyfield, where weekend waits can stretch beyond an hour.
“Even after adding Happy Room [our second dining room] we’re still turning customers away every weekend, and sometimes they don’t come back because it’s just too busy.”
Now, if there’s no room across the three dining rooms at Happyfield, Happy Room and Happy Shop – which all together offer 124 seats – diners can take their custom-packaged food to the nearby Haberfield Town Square, where picnic tables and gazebos await.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Erina Starkey – Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held a number of editing roles at delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
