The best coffee in Sydney

There's a reason this roastery/café on Reservoir Street is still one of lower Surry Hills' most popular spot for a pre-work brekky meeting. For starters, there's the coffee – no surprise, given the spot is HQ for the roasters supplying some of Sydney's top cafés. The team here serve a house blend they call Reservoir and it's a doozy: sweet, clean and light – perfect for your morning cup.

This Potts Point café is big on pared-back interiors, good coffee and friendly service. They source their own green beans and roast their own coffee, and they'll do you a solid cold drip, a velvety smooth cap or a milky iced latte. Kick back on the blonde wooden bench and enjoy one with a croissant to kick-start your ay on a positive note. You'll also find KeepCups for sale, native floral displays and take-home beans. 

Are you a fan of Melbourne’s specialty coffee roaster, Padre Coffee? If so, you should head to Paddington’s Five Ways, where you’ll find Padre’s first Sydney concept store. Not sure what a concept store is? Basically, it’s a haven for coffee lovers, with an espresso bar, self-serve taps for hot filter and cold brew, a retail section so you can shop Padre’s signature espresso blends and home-brewing equipment, and a whole section dedicated to learning and training – all under the one roof. Coffee geeks, drink your heart out. We order an oat cap most mornings; it’s smooth, nutty, well-balanced and yum.

Ona is a white, bright, accessible oasis in a sea of grey and they are very, very serious about coffee here. The long central bench is the control centre that houses seven different grinders (five filled), each introduced to us like they’re bachelors fighting for your rose. In between high pressure extractions they’re also toying with filter coffee and batch brews. If you want to really discuss your daily grind, this is the place to do it. Their excitement is palpable, and they want to share it with you. 

Barrel One rolled up the slider doors of its Potts Point café in February 2023. It was the fourth venue for owners Daniel Agapiou and Samuel Graham, who founded the coffee roaster in 2012 and have since built quite the empire with cafés in Brookvale, Manly, Cromer and Lane Cove. Pair one of their ripper bagels with a house Solera Blend coffee, which they roast using beans from small fair trade farmers in Guatemala, Java and Colombia. Batch brew, long blacks and espressos are brewed using Barrel One’s single origin of the day.

Superfreak is a funky all-day eatery in Marrickville from the team behind Newtown’s Soulmate and Petersham’s Splash. Single O is supplying the beans here, and there’s filter and batch brew from Artificer Coffee. Want to try something fun? Go for the adaptogen hot choc with cocoa, medicinal mushrooms, honey, oat milk and cinnamon. Oh, and order the porridge – trust us.

The café space is beautiful but Skittle Lane ain’t just about Instagram-worthy interiors – these guys are dishing out full-bodied brews and roasting their own beans. Two large steely silver La Marzocco coffee machines pump out espressi, which are the exact right way to kick start your morning: rich, gentle and very well made. CBD workers know this too so there's a small line snaking out into the adjacent lobby. Their pourover is worth an order too – on our visit it's an Ethiopia Abaya that's got soft, fruity notes. You'll also find Skittle Lane in Bondi, Manly and Circular Quay.

Nice staff working the floor, tasty snacks on the menu, and great coffee – Surry Hills café Reuben Hills has it all. They roast their own beans sourced from all over the world, including Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, resulting in cracking coffee.

Every coffee type is tasted fresh daily before the doors swing open at seven, and the vigilance doesn't cease until the doors are closed. That’s dedication. They are also the folks behind Gumption in the Strand.

You'll find The Grounds Coffee Factory – a mammoth, Willy Wonka-esque coffee roastery and café dedicated to the perfect cup of joe – in South Eveleigh. A project six years in the making (thanks, Covid), The Grounds Coffee Factory is the sibling to the world’s most Instagrammable eatery, The Grounds of Alexandria, as well as The Grounds of the City. There’s a latte to love here, with the coffee mecca offering roastery tours, coffee cuppings and handy workshops – including advanced home barista classes. Plus, dogs are welcome in the outside area.

At Campos, a cramped corner of coffee-crazed Sydney, the baristas are as much a part of the action as the black magic elixirs that draw connoisseur crowds from all over Sydney. Three men in black - half man, half machine - move as one to background jazz, arms thrusting, wrists snapping, hands thwacking like trip hammers and torsos twisting with the effort of finding and grinding, tamping and clamping. "Speed, calm, passion, power," says owner Will Young, who founded Campos many years back. Young is a believer that the perfect coffee is "40 per cent bean, 40 per cent barista and 20 per cent machine - the ultimate aim for all baristas is to make coffee taste as good as it smells." 

Mecca have long been the kingpins of the Sydney coffee game and you'll find their beans in their own café outposts and a handful of other excellent coffee spots dotted across the city. The beans are roasted in Alexandria in their vintage German roaster born in 1957 that produces a rich, deep, melodic flavour.

Parramatta North's Havenstone is set in a lovingly restored sandstone building from 1888. Once upon a time, it was the Female Factory – a place that housed female convicts who arrived in New South Wales in the 1820s and '30s. Today, part of this historic building and its sunny surroundings create a peaceful backdrop for all-day breakfast and lunch. If you're in the area, drop in for a great cup of coffee – and your four-legged friends are welcome to come, too.

You might remember the little side street café from its former stint as a Toby’s Estate satellite, but now the beans are produced in house and boy, are they onto a winner. Here the coffee reaches that mythical union where scent and flavour come together as one, the temperature maintained under beautifully worked milk with a touch of latte art that indicates skill more than flair.

This Redfern corner café serves a killer breakfast and beautiful coffees. They roast their own beans and dish out a single origin blend each week. 

Like the mystical wardrobe to Narnia, Sample Coffee is a cupboard-sized portal to a whole new dimension of caffeinated bliss. Owner Reuben Mardan got his start in the coffee biz roasting at Single Origin and Mecca before finally branching out on his own to bring the beans to the people. This Surry Hills coffee nook serves up excellent espresso care of the Pacemaker house blend that they punch out double time on two coffee machines.

Taking up residence in an old warehouse that faces onto Victoria Road, Double Roasters draws in passers by with the heady aroma of freshly roasted coffee. The source of this siren scent is the stately Probat roaster – also the subject of an enormous diagram on one wall – which sits out the back churning out the Flight Path house blend. It’s a hive of activity at this roasting house café.

Cabrito Coffee Traders roasts their own beans right there in Circular Quay. Their house blends are inspired by the vibrancy of places like Ethopia and Peru and you can take your own bag home.