Crows Nest cafe Double Cross has gone large. After six years serving coffee on the suburb’s main drag, the team has taken up residence in a much larger space just around the corner. The menu is bigger, the team is bigger, and even the florals on display are big.

“They’re done by Ed [Strachan], who used to be head roaster at Single O,” co-owner Samuel Lee tells Broadsheet when asked about the branches positioned (often precariously) in a vase at the shop’s entrance. “He’s a good friend of ours, and it’s a passion of his.”

There’s a lot of passion poured into Double Cross Dining Room (formerly known as Double Cross Espresso Bar). Lee and business partner Quinton Ng started the business six years ago; back then they spent three months on the cafe’s fit-out, with the help of some handy family members. And it was the passion of their loyal customers that saw them not only survive but thrive through lockdowns.

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“When the real estate agent, who is a friend of ours, first approached us about moving to the bigger space, I thought it was way too big,” says Lee. “But then we did a pop-up in the empty space next door and thought, ‘Actually, maybe we can.’”

The new 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.

“We’ve kept a lot of our classic menu items, but expanded,” says Lee. “The menu will change a lot though, and we’ve just updated it, adding in more Asian-influenced dishes.”

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 still there.

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.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any bigger (and Lee and Ng couldn’t get any busier), there’s talk about soon opening three nights a week. Word is Double Cross will become a specialty katsu bar by night.

“We’ve got a plan, and it’s finally starting to look like a concrete one,” Lee teases.

Double Cross Dining Room
Shop 1/31 Albany Street, Crows Nest

Hours:
Mon to Fri 6am–4pm
Sat & Sun 7am–4pm

@doublecrossdiningroom