Meet Flora, the Veggie-Forward All-Day Dining Utopia From the Continental Deli Crew

Brunching in Sydney is a contact sport. You’re sweatily standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a queue outside a cafe; you’ve squished your fifth friend into the corner of your table for four; and you’re desperately trying to order before the clock strikes 11 and your dreams of pancakes and eggs Benny are replaced with lunchtime sangas.

In contrast, brunching at Flora is utopian. Behind the butter-yellow facade there’s light wood panelling, warm pendant lights, marble countertops and scattered greenery. It’s like something out of a Nancy Meyers movie – no brunch stressing here.

The all-day spot on Newtown’s Australia Street is one of three new venues from Paisano & Daughters, a hospitality group founded by brothers-in-law Elvis Abrahanowicz (Porteño and Bar Louise) and Joseph Valore along with their partners Annabella Valore and Sarah Doyle. To the left of their seminal Continental Deli (as you look from the street) you’ll find Flora and Mister Grotto, and in early March Osteria Mucca – an Italian steak and pasta restaurant in an old butcher – will join the gang in the space to the right of Continental.

Flora’s name nods to the venue’s vegetarian menu. “My wife [and co-owner] Sarah [Doyle] is vegetarian, so at home most of our meals are vegetable-focused,” Abrahanowicz tells Broadsheet. “I kinda wanted an extension of that [but] after 20 years of opening so many restaurants, we’ve never had so many people ringing up and asking questions [about not serving meat].”

In an effort to reduce the phone calls, they wrote “Yes, we’re vegetarian” in size 29 font across the website.

Abrahanowicz is joined by head chef Jude Hughes (ex-Three Blue Ducks), who’s returning to Sydney after making a name for himself at Adelaide’s now-closed institution The Summertown Aristologist. Hughes “fit the bill” when it came to Flora’s MO: house-made cheeses and vinegars underpin the menu, and there’s a fermentation program incoming.

An early contender for Flora’s signature dish – and, in our opinion, Sydney’s best pancake – is the ricotta and cacao husk short stack. The syrup is silky and rich, with a deeply flavoured honeycomb-esque nob of quickly melting butter. “We soak the cacao husk in milk overnight and it makes almost like a sour chocolate milk,” says Abrahanowicz. “We smoke the maple syrup [and] do espresso butter, which is the Copper Tree Farm butter whipped with fresh espresso from Loggerhead.”

Savoury daytime dishes include roast tomato and bullhorn pepper gazpacho with sheep’s milk yoghurt, torn fig and chilli oil served with a dainty cheese and a rosemary bikini (a thin crustless sandwich); and a burger made with a chickpea walnut patty which impressed Abrahanowicz, despite him confessing he’s “not a burger person”.

With the evening menu switch-up comes an indulgent twice-baked corn soufflé and a ragu made with mushrooms grown in St Peters and served with casarecce made by the Mucca team. “It’s almost like you’re eating a meat bolognaise, it might be even better. We grill [the mushrooms] and we marinate them overnight in red wine, then we mince them and cook it for hours.”

With Flora and its new companions, Paisano & Daughters has done something remarkable: opened four truly distinct venues in a neat little row. When we ask Abrahanowicz if anyone has done a crawl of all the venues, he says not yet, but he has a recommended game plan: “On the weekend, Flora for breakfast, Mister Grotto for a few oysters. Then in the afternoon, have some cold-cuts at the deli before moving to dinner at Mucca for a steak and pasta.”

Taking it even further, the team are opening a trio of suites above the venues in early March.

Flora
206 Australia Street, Newtown
(02) 9123 5501

Hours:
Daily 8am–10pm

paisanoanddaughters.com.au/venue/flora
@flora_newtown