Cuckoo Callay Surry Hills

Cuckoo Callay’s venue in Surry Hills (there's also one in Newtown, which is pretty different) is one of the nicest places to sit in Sydney. Like the Clock Hotel across the road, on a good afternoon it’s perfectly sunlit, has views of the whole street and is an exceptional perch for people-watching and lazy Sunday mornings.

The space has an open-air top floor repainted with Cuckoo Callay’s signature pink, green and white branding, a thin downstairs dining room that spills out onto a public lawn and a much bigger kitchen.

Try the Waffling Mexican; two churros waffles served with butterscotch bananas, orange, fried Nutella and brownie ice-cream. Or the ‘Shroom Hog, a smoked ham rillette atop a jelly-like mushroom custard and a rich mushroom broth. Even something as seemingly simple as corn fritters are reworked with an Indonesian-inspired vermicelli salad, a pork-coated scotch egg and XO sauce.

From Newtown it has brought the mac‘n’cheese, bacon-and-egg-stuffed croissant, as well as the coffee – beans are from Marrickville’s Coffee Alchemy. Cocktails are the usual morning suspects, albeit with their own take – Mimosas and Bloody Marys.