500 George St, Sydney NSW 2000
Coffee: Toby’s Estate / Workshop Espresso
Passion: 8/10
Crema: 8/10
The first coffee I had here was their Ethiopian Yiracheffe which, to be honest, didn’t really excite me. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very decent coffee, better than a good 80% of the house blends available at Sydney cafes, but it simply ended as a robust coffee.
I followed it up with their Costa Rica Perla Negra which was cheese to the first coffee’s chalk. Again a quite robust coffee, but with a mid peak brightness that then smoothed out nearly all the way. Unfortunately, while waiting for the cup to cool a little so I could get a whiff of the surprisingly heavy floral notes, there was something in the after-taste that stayed far longer than required. While I can not put my finger on what it was exactly, my tongue felt dry in a not pleasant way. All up a much better coffee than the first.
So as this is likely to be one of the very few cafes serving Toby’s Estate that I will recommend, just be safe in the knowledge that this cafe is the exception to the rule. The skills of the baristas go a long, long way to making the experience here worthwhile.