Explore Best Cafes in Sydney, Australia’s oldest and most populous city.  Sydney has a young coffee and cafe culture that has quickly boomed and been exported around the globe, with “Australian style” cafes opening in cities from London to New York. 

Here, specialty coffee and good food go together hand-in-hand and, on the weekend, families, couples and groups of friends cram the sprawling city’s many vibrant cafes to enjoy a leisurely brunch. 

Coffee first came to Sydney in 1788 via Brazil with the First Fleet, 11 small ships bearing convicts and their guards from England to set up a penal colony on the edge of the vast Australian continent. The Gold Rush of the 1850s saw an inrush of new settlers from many countries and money flowed freely. Parisian-style salons serving cafe au lait and cafe noir began to spring up, followed by elaborate coffee palaces in the 1880s. 

In the mid-1930s, the Greek-born brothers John and Emmanuel Andronicus began importing green beans from around the world and roasting them locally. The brothers are also largely credited with importing and installing Australia’s first modern espresso equipment in the late 1940s.

During the late 1990s and into the 2000s many of the best-known Sydney roaster-retailers were established a hipster cafe scene emerged in the inner suburbs that has now spread far and wide from  beach-side suburbs to urban centres throughout the north, south and west. If you’re visiting Sydney, suggest “Let’s do brunch”, head for a local cafe and don’t forget to try a Flat White, a coffee style apparently invented by a Sydneysider.