Industry Beans York Street

Industry Beans is all about fast specialty coffee. Co-owner Trevor Simmons' aim is to eventually have all coffees made within three minutes (the cashless counter helps speed things up too).

Housed in a heritage-listed building on York Street, Industry Beans’s sleek, minimalistic and very white signature design is thanks to Melbourne-based firm DesignOffice. It features a large modular coffee bar customised with purpose-built La Marzocco Modbar coffee machines (each machine sits beneath the counter and the coffee-dispensing taps sit on top).

The coffee coming from those spouts are Industry Beans’s own roasts and blends of single origin beans. Aside from the regular milk-based and black coffees, the cafe's Melbourne original has developed a following in Melbourne for its cold-brew bubble cup, which combines cold-brew coffee, coffee-soaked tapioca pearls, and a house-blended condensed-soy milk. Also popular is the Fitzroy Iced, made with cold-brew coffee, milk and wattleseed and panela syrup. Both are here on the Sydney menu.

Open every day, the kitchen at the 20-seater joint is headed up by Kristy Wood, former head chef of The Rook. She’s using molecular gastronomy to incorporate coffee into the dishes. A coffee-rubbed Wagyu burger is available at lunch, and for breakfast, coffee caviar comes served with the cinnamon-dusted brioche and the crazily-named fruit sashimi (which comprises compressed watermelon, citrus raindrop cake, cherry and blood-orange-cured papaya served with a wattleseed and pepper leaf rice crisp and coffee chaff milk jelly). The cafe has also collaborated with Bakedown Cakery to create coffee-infused chocolate truffles.

While the menu changes seasonally and most of the dishes have been borrowed from their Fitzroy outpost in Melbourne, there are some dishes available only in Sydney like the green bowl, the baguettes and the omelette.