Café con Leche

Cafe con Leche in Surry Hills

Café con Leche was recommended to me by a Mexican friend who had spent six months in Sydney searching for a decent South American-style café. The reviews were certainly glowing enough – one leading food review website spoke of the beautiful Colombian women behind the bar, brewing organic Colombian coffee, and tasty Colombian treats to snack on, and even breakfast items to wake up to.

So you can imagine the disappointment I felt when I arrived to see a man behind the counter, and a rather small selection of dishes, many of which involved pork or pork products. Additionally, several of the dishes looked decidedly bland, something which flew in the face of everything I expected from a Colombian espresso bar. I settled for a café latte and a nutty biscuit, a bit like peanut brittle, with one side dipped in chocolate – deliciously oversweet, but over too soon. The café was decorated in kitsch memorabilia from Latin America, with retro posters, masks, a dart board and the like. My friend and I left underwhelmed – it had been pleasant, but not exactly the fireworks-in-our-mouths experience we had been promised.

Fast-forward three months, and since my trip to Café con Leche I have befriended several Colombians through my work, and even been invited by one kind friend to tour Colombia with him when he returns from Australia next year. In this short time, and through numerous intriguing conversations, I realise just how much I had misjudged Colombian cuisine. It is a source of shame for me that I would make such assumptions about Colombian culture when I knew so little about the country – after all, I hate it when people do the same for me and my cultural identity. (Admittedly, others judging my culture doesn’t rile me half as much as people judging me as a person, but they’re borne of the same ignorance).

Like the cuisine of most countries, Colombian food is not known for being one of the world’s staples. Colombian cuisine is no Italian, Indian, Chinese or Thai. While delicious, it lacks the boldness, the spiciness, the boistrousness of these cuisines, and is as a result rather subtle – and subtlety is never a good quality when you’re trying to get noticed. In this way, it suffers the same fate as some of the world’s lesser known culinary traditions, like Burmese, Croatian or Brazilian.

Wall sketches in Cafe con Leche

Furthermore, Colombia suffers from being both geographically and culturally close to a nation much more famous for its cuisine – Mexico. Most people would probably assume that Colombian cuisine involves tacos and burritos, but dig deeper, and they’ll probably tell you that they actually don’t know what Colombian food is like, but that it’s near Mexico, so it must be the same. In this way, Colombian cuisine is similar to Iranian, which usually gets lumped together with Arabic food despite being very different; Bengali, which is “probably all about curry” as some would say; and like Korean, which many people think is “just like Chinese”.

The delicate flavours of Colombian cuisine is to be found in arepas, the corn pancakes which could be served with guacamole, cheese, different types of salsas, sour cream or chopped meat, or even just on their own. They are savoury and sweet in equal measure, and although not heavy, two could easily fill you up on the way to work with a morning coffee. And as one might expect for such a big exporter of the stuff, coffee is part of the culture – Colombians love their coffee, and the biscuits represent a sweet comfort food to take the edge off the slightly bitter brew. Moreover, the style of eating is something to learn from – everything is provided in sensible portions, but is remarkably filling. Satisfying, not stuffing.

So in retrospect, while this review is written based on a misunderstood experience, I would gladly return to Café con Leche in Sydney to take in an arepa or two, just walking distance from Central Station. However the real experience begins when you take some time out to order a coffee, take a seat by one of the open windows in the cute eatery, watch the Surry Hills traffic snarl past, and feel your whole world slow down. And then you smile. How very Colombian.

Cafe con Leche decor

Details

Food: 6/10

Ambience: 8/10

Service: 7/10

Cost: Coffee from $3.50, light meals from $8

104 Fitzroy Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, 2010

Monday – Sunday: 10am – 7pm