After three years of ripping out, designing and rebuilding, Cafe Lewi is finally open, bringing classic French pastries, yolky breakfast buns and roast chicken sandwiches.
Sitting on a smooth ledge of green-swirled quartzite, a dainty, ivory white marjolaine, its ornate Rococo-esque piped icing dimensions worthy of Marie-Antoinette’s chompers, is stopping passersby mid-step.
“Is it real?” one says, stepping inside the front door of Cafe Lewi.
Chef John Laureti, who owns and runs the seven-week-old cafe with partner and chef Isabella Leva Laureti, raises his arms in bonhomie.
“Absolutely,” he says. “Come on in.”
The thrill, on both sides, is evident. First the customer, soon plunging their fork into former Rockpool pastry chef Leva Laureti’s take on the classic French pastry – a nutty, creamy, crunchy layering of hazelnut dacquoise, brown butter Valrhona ganache and hazelnut mousseline decorated in Lambeth-style piping.
And then Laureti and Leva Laureti – bouyant because after buying this two-storey former corner store in 2020, and spending three years ripping out, designing and rebuilding everything except the building’s exterior walls, their 19-seat cafe is open.
I’m eating Laureti’s salmon confit, a turreted tower of crunchy potato base, smooth-as-ice-cream whipped avocado and stacked New Zealand Ora King, the latter’s silky conical flecked with fresh sorrel.
“That’s our take on smashed avocado,” he says.
Two days before it was the roast chicken sandwich, a soft, garlic butter-licked bread roll mingling chopped plump meat, gravy, iceberg lettuce and Calabrian chilli. This is matched with a lemon verbena and nectarine soda and followed by a nutmeg-dusted custard tart slice with brilliantly buttery pastry, and a Mr Pistachio, the mousse-bellied, nut-festooned star of the pair’s pandemic baking delivery business Pane Dolce, based in Earlwood.
It is all beautiful food. In a suburban street cafe, metres from a railway station and amid a tiny row of shops, it feels decidedly fancy.
Laureti and Leva Laureti put this down to their fine-dining background – most recently working at Pt. Leo Estate on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. And noticing a hole in the market.
“We were going to be more of a bakery – bread and pastries – but then we thought, there’s no real place in this immediate area to have some proper, proper food,” Laureti says. “And we wanted to change our lifestyle as well.”
After 15 years of working nights, running their own cafe means Laureti and Leva Laureti, who live upstairs, can go to bed at reasonable hours.
“When we start a family, we want to have a routine that allows that,” Laureti says. “We know chefs with kids who’re going to bed at one o’clock in the morning, and we’re keen to avoid that.”
Cafe Lewi is a place to take your time. Its interior architecture – ribbed curves, sweeping arch inset, broad high windows framing sky, a terrace house alley and neighbouring tiny shops (including Maia Speciality espresso cafe across the road) – is deeply soothing.
The menu, which runs from breakfast to lunch, also includes an excellent, abundantly yolky, breakfast bun layered with sausage, fried egg, hash brown, cheese and teriyaki flavours (available all-day), a parmesan and herb omelette paired with Leva Laureti’s zucchini flower focaccia, and a top summer salad pick with ox heart tomato with peach, macadamia, shiso and bocconcini.
Pair this with a spring rhubarb Saison vermouth over ice from their selection of beer, cider, cocktails and wine and, if not nabbed, the magnificent marjolaine.
Plus, Laureti and Leva Laureti love a chat. Their semi-open kitchen, stationed at the end of the eight-metre-long galley-style quartzite counter dotted with vintage silver coupes and a silver champagne bucket from Laureti’s grandmother, means they see, and greet, most customers.
“Everyone passing has enthusiastic questions,” Leva Laureti says. “They want us to open at nights for dinner, and we’re going to.
“I cannot tell you how happy we are to be open.”
Three more cafe and cake shops to try
Hearthe
Christopher Thé fills his cafe window with refined baked goods made with native ingredients, from bunyah nut to cinnamon myrtle, eucalypt caramel and white kunzea honey. Match wine with smoked barramundi or Thé’s chewy, syrupy, softly crackling paperbark dacquoise, mingling saltbush seeds, ground wattleseed and honeycomb.
16 Douglas Street, Stanmore, hearthe.com.au
This swishly decorated European-inspired bakery and bistro swings from breakfast to late lunch with dishes ranging from salmon, polenta and eggs to veal and pork polpette and a pink-iced, berry jam-filled, almond and lime sponge Louise cake, with wines, beers and cocktails
Shop 2/168 Walker Street, North Sydney, solbreadandwine.sydney
Ellen
Tree- and lawn-edged, with linen lanterns swinging in the breeze, Ellen’s ever-changing seasonal menu retains its customer favourite, the paper-wrapped crumbed fish burger zinging with pickles and seeded mustard. Match it with nori-salted fries, wine and beer or house special, a cooling honeycomb espresso.
153/18 Huntley Street, Alexandria, @ellen_cafe
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