First Look: Crumb Is Your Ticket to Lasagne Toasties and Calabrian Brekkie Sangas

Leora Bablanian and Joe Bruscino are over run-of-the-mill Sydney brunches.

“There’s only so many ways you can do avocado toast and poached eggs, right?” says Bruscino.

The couple have just opened Crumb, in a shopping village in Leppington. The suburban joint is a love letter not only to the deli culture of New York and Italy, but also the Sydney sanga boom.

“I‘m a little bit of a late riser,” Bablanian tells Broadsheet. “So, [Joe would] be shaking me at like nine o‘clock in the morning like, ‘Dude, get up. I want to go try this spot’, and it would be in the eastern suburbs or over the bridge.”

These criss-crossing adventures around the city inspired the pair – they decided to combat the “sameness” of the southwest’s cafe culture. They wanted a fast and loud local spot, serving hefty Italian sandwiches. They wanted a menu that promises you’ll never need a knife and fork.

“Everything‘s eaten with your hands,” Bruscino says. “It might not be traditional table service,” adds Bablanian. “That doesn‘t mean that you‘re not getting service. That doesn‘t mean that you‘re not feeling like it is the most incredible interaction every time you walk in the door.”

The cornerstone of the menu is the couple’s Calabrian heritage, which has references throughout. Take the Goodfella’s, where whipped ricotta and mortadella are folded into a woodfired Pizza Rocco pizza base – made especially for Crumb – instead of your classic sliced bread. And straight off the bat, the lasagne toastie’s been a fan favourite. Bruscino calls it “nostalgia in a sandwich”: six-hour slow-cooked ragu and plenty of bechamel are loaded into two intentionally burnt pieces of garlic bread.

“That lasagne toastie, for me, is the nostalgia of [every] Sunday-night dinner that I‘ve had for the last 30 years,” he says. “You know, my mum would make a sauce and cook it for hours, starting early Sunday morning.”

They’re also proud of the Nonna’s Breakfast. Available until 10am every day, the “leftovers sandwich” is carried by pepe e patate. This classic Calabrian medley of potato and capsicum is paired with fried pancetta, provolone and a pair of fried eggs, with Calabrian chillies for heat.

“Lunch was whatever Mum made the day before, stuck between two pieces of pane di casa or an Italian bread roll,” says Bablanian. “There‘s a lot of deeply personal inspiration in there – I‘d have that for breakfast all the time. Chuck pepe e patate inside a bread roll then put a fried egg on it. Breakfast-ify it by adding bacon – or pancetta in this case.”

Beyond sandwiches, the Crumb team’s nailing sweet treats and coffee. Together with young pastry chef Chro SS, Bruscino bakes (and sells out) 500 cookies each weekend – there’s salted choc-chip, Biscoff snickerdoodle, stuffed Nutella numbers and more to pick from. The house-made treats are supported by pasteis de nata and doughnuts from Tuga. Beans are hand-delivered by someone Bruscino calls the “Einstein of coffee”: Ernest Igual of St Dreux Coffee Roasters.

“He’s one of those savants that lives it, that breathes it. Dreams about it,” Bablanian says. “He’ll message Joe like, ‘How’s that grind? I’m going to come and recalibrate your machine’, because that’s deeply important to him.”

“The most common thing we hear from our customers is ‘We’ve been waiting for something like this in the area for so long’,” Bruscino says. “You know, you’re coming there and it’s not clinical and boring and cold. It’s fun and exciting and loud.”

Crumb
Shop 2H/5 Raby Road, Leppington

Hours:
Mon to Fri 7am–3pm
Sat & Sun 7am–3pm
Or until sold out.

@crumbsyd