The Grounds Coffee Factory

Start with the Choux Cream, then the house blend

The Choux Cream is the drink to order first: espresso with creamy milk, salted caramel syrup, custard cream and rose petals, closer to a dessert than to a latte and unmistakably the house signature. It is sweet, and deliberately so.

The coffee underneath it is Loco Street, the roastery's own house blend, and it is worth ordering plainly as well to see what the machinery out on the floor is actually producing. There is a separate tea and coffee menu beside the signatures, and a Seasonal Iced Tea that has appeared as grapefruit when the weather calls for something cold.

Eating among the working machinery

The Grounds Coffee Factory is the South Eveleigh site of The Grounds, set inside the historic Locomotive Workshop, and the roastery is not hidden behind a door. Food and drink are served among the working machinery, in an enormous room with high ceilings, tall palm trees and retro brown and yellow tones borrowed from the 1970s.

The programme goes well beyond ordering at a counter. Roaster tours, cuppings, workshops, a Manual Brewing Workshop and The Factory Tour all put production in front of guests, which is the point of the format. The Grounds runs several Sydney rooms, among them The Grounds Cafe, The Potting Shed, The Garden Bar & BBQ and The Grounds of the City, but this one is built around production rather than gardens. There is a cafeteria component too, with group dining and set menus, so arrival can be busy, with seated tables and takeaway movement happening close together.

The food, and the cake trolley

The kitchen goes past a pastry case. Takeaway has included a chicken schnitzel focaccia and a pressed Cubano baguette, while the sit-down list has run to a Fish Finger Sandwich with cocktail sauce, gem lettuce, pickles, grated parmesan and potato scallops, and a Mortadella and Honey Focaccia with red onion, pistachio, stracciatella, endive, chilli and salted potato chips.

Sweets arrive on a cake trolley that opens drawer by drawer: cakes, tarts, macarons and coffee-forward desserts, including a Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with ganache and hazelnuts, alongside retro choices such as a banana split. A good order is the Choux Cream, something from the focaccia side, and room left for the trolley.