This Chatswood cafe brings the beauty of the outdoors inside a bustling modern shopping mall.

Designed to simulate a Victorian conservatory, with a framework of ornate steelwork and glass, tessellated tile floor, wicker dining chairs and an abundance of hanging flower baskets, Flower Child Cafe offers a delightful retreat where customers can appreciate both culinary delights and the beauty of the space itself – even though it’s situated deep inside a large modern shopping mall.

Founders Chris Lu and Adam Choker aimed to create a space where customers would forget where they were by bringing the beauty of the outdoors in and aimed to create an environment that would transport them from the starkly lit, contrived atmosphere of a shopping centre to something that’s more natural.

The pair also run the Happy as Larry pizza truck that appears in several locations around Sydney, and Choker’s brother, Ramsay, runs The Grounds of the City restaurant, coffee roastery and bakery complex in Sydney’s CBD. To create the atmosphere they desired for Flower Child Cafe they enlisted Caroline Choker of ACME, the design studio also responsible for the elegant, old world charm of The Grounds.

Photography by Andrew Chung

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Chef Nick Jovicki, formerly of Merivale and restaurant Wildfire at Circular Quay, designed a menu filled with pretty but wholesome food bedecked with edible flowers. Photogenic favourites include the Flower Child French Toast, with banana mascarpone, dark-chocolate crumb, fresh berries and salted toffee. Just as Instagram-worthy is the deceptively simple-sounding fruit salad, which includes compressed pineapple, lychee, freeze-dried raspberries and yoghurt sorbet.

Some menu items, such as burgers, sandwiches and acai bowls, are available to take away. Pastries, bread and coffee (including cold drip and pour-over) are by The Grounds.

Besides using flowers for food presentation and design, Flower Child also gives a nod to the original “flower children” of the ’60s, who walked the streets of San Francisco giving out flowers to brighten up people’s days. At Flower Child, customers are presented with tiny flowers with their coffee, and with the bill.

Flower Child Cafe, Shop 391, Westfield Shopping Centre, Chatswood, Sydney, Australia. Open Mon to Sun 8am – 5pm, except Thu 8am – 9pm.