Crown Street is full of interesting little cafes, but fouratefive is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the neighbourhood. Apart from the witty name, there’s a lot to like about this popular Surry Hills café located at 485 Crown Street. We arrive for a late lunch around 2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon to find that they are still quite full up but we still manage to snag a spot at their communal table.
There’s a cosy, homely kind of vibe throughout the place with a colourful painting splashed across one wall, pencil markings of children’s heights and some magazines on the table for you to peruse.
There’s a lot on the menu we want to try but we end up getting one dish from their all day breakfast menu and one from their lunch menu to balance things out. We ordered a couple of coffees too, the usual mocha for me and a cappuccino for the boy.
Mocha and Cappuccino, $4 each
First to come is the breakfast dish – smoked salmon and avocado which comes on a double layer of organic sourdough topped with ricotta, parsley and lovely poached eggs. The dish is full of fresh flavours and textures; we especially liked the glorious runny yolk spilling out from the eggs. Big tick for a decent sized savoury breakfast if you like some seafood to start off your day.
Smoked salmon and avocado, $18
I had opted for the Roast Beef sandwich because it came with a myriad of tasty sounding sauces – onion relish, dijon mustard and aioli. The description on the menu didn’t let me down and the sandwich on organic sourdough was packed full of flavour, masking the usual blandness of the slivers of roast beef. It also came with some Polish pickled cucumbers (“polski ogorki’) which I’m usually not a fan of but it worked well with the other components of the sandwich. It was quite a decent sized serving for the price, and thankfully was already sliced into halves for easy eating and sharing, though it did still get a bit messy with all the different sauces and tomato/lettuce juice dripping out.
Roast beef sandwich with onion relish, fresh tomato, Dijon, aioli, polski ogorki and cos lettuce on organic sourdough, $13
I enjoyed our visit to fouratefive thanks to the laidback atmosphere of the place, which was perfect for a lazy Saturday arvo. We left feeling quite satisfied, planning to return another time to try other things off their menu like their intriguing French Toast with mascarpone and rhubarb.
fouratefive
485 Crown Street
Surry Hills, NSW 2010
Phone: (02) 9698 6485
