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Café Ish puts the organ in organic, writes Nick Dent.
The morning before the Mardi Gras parade is crisp and sunny, exactly the way I don’t feel. I went out the night before with Dr Love and bought myself a premium hangover. Like any impulse purchase, obtaining it proved far more fun that actually owning it.
So when the two of us stumble into Café Ish for brunch, we’re quite unprepared for the sight of the garrulous chef, Josh, in heavy eye makeup and bondage leather, nor for the spectacle of two large chocolate-cake penises with shaved-chocolate pubes. Josh got up early this morning to make sweetmeats in the spirit of the occasion.
There are plump, pink cupcake breasts with raspberry nipples, plus what appear to be fairy-bread vaginas. Something for all the family to wrap their laughing gear around.
A tiny place tucked behind Frog Hollow on Albion Street, Café Ish is keeping three balls in the air simultaneously. It’s totally organic and free range; it uses native Australian bush food; and it has Japanese inflections. Ai, the barista and co-owner, is from Niigata – hence menu items like poached eggs with crispy fried soft shell crab – while Josh, her partner, likes to toss wattle seeds into cheesecakes and Maccacinos, and to cook up crocodile sausages or kangaroo bourginon pie.
That pie swiftly cleanses me of last night’s sins. The gamey roo is a perfect fit for the rich mushroomy bourginon, together with curls of bacon from a black Berkshire pig. A sourdough baguette is thoughtfully supplied to sop up the delicious dregs.
Considering many Surry Hills cafes charge $15 for plain old eggs and bacon, this is something you really have to try.
Dr Love selects a Soboro pork omelette ($16). The egg is wrapped like a crepe around sweet, marinated minced Bangalow pork, baked pumpkin and greens, with miso mayonnaise on the side and a topping of watercress. It’s breakfast, Jim, but not as we know it. It’s somewhere between a tamagoyaki and a Bill Granger special, and a real delight.
Passing on the genitalia, I choose (for afters) one of Josh’s home-made wagon wheels ($4). Like the Weston’s ones I grew up on, it’s two biscuits joined with marshmallow and jam, coated in milk chocolate. With home-baked biscuits and rosella jam (another Aussie native), it’s a mouthwateringly decadent treat.
There are Native Australian tea infusions, the beef is grass-fed, the milk is from an organic dairy in Picton, and there’s even four kinds of salt (citrus, chilli, volcano and Murray River pink). The ‘Ish’ name implies hesitancy, but there’s a decisiveness about this place – an idealism.
Josh and Ai are true believers, and it shows both on the plate and in their exceptionally friendly and unpretentious service. Just what the hell did Surry Hills ever do to deserve them?
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