Double Cross Dining Room

There’s a lot of passion poured into Double Cross Dining Room (formerly known as Double Cross Espresso Bar). Owners Samuel Lee and business partner Quinton Ng spent three months on the cafe’s fit-out, with the help of some handy family members. The space can fit up to 100 people but still feels calm and spacious. The clean-cut blond Tasmanian oak joinery floats above a sleek concrete floor, while warm lights dangle overhead.

On the weekend you’ll often see just as many staff behind the coffee machine as running its good-looking Asian-fusion dishes to the tables. The “unusual eggs on toast” is a crowd favourite. Two slices of thick sourdough are topped with fried eggs, stracciatella, peanut butter, sesame sauce and Lao Gan Ma chilli sauce. It’s the kind of fusion cooking that first put Double Cross on the map. For lunch, the tonkatsu tamago sando (a Japanese egg sandwich with pork tonkatsu) is a hit, and of course the mentaiko (marinated cod roe) pasta is also a highlight.

Primary Coffee Roasters supplies Double Cross’s beans. Beans and coffee-making paraphernalia are available to buy in-store – but you’ll find the real coffee-centric action back at Double Cross’s original site, which the team has retained and now runs under the name Only Coffee Project.