Page 17 - foodservice magazine September 2018

DINING
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So they made a pact: subvert the traditional. “We said, ‘If you want poached eggs, you won’t find that here. Or for a bacon and egg roll, we know a great place across the road. But if you want to try something adventurous from a different culture, then we’re for you’.” Jackson adds, “If you’re going to come out all the way to a cafe, why would we serve you what you can make at home?”
Enter Scandi-Japanese, breakfast-brunch-lunch, cafe-meets- restaurant fare. The Scandinavian food movement was picking up steam at the time and the duo was endlessly inspired by
the clean, natural approach championed at Noma, Fäviken
and Relae. This was strikingly similar, they observed, to
Japanese cuisine, another shared culinary muse. “Both cuisines don’t touch things much,” says Jackson, who names pickling, fermenting and raw food as other common traits, along with resounding visual ties. Of Darlinghurt’s bright white, minimalist fit out: “A lot of Japanese people would come in and say the cafe reminds them of a casual fine diner in Tokyo. And someone from Sweden would say the same thing.” They had scoured references online and knocked it up themselves.
So, the cafe opens and... crickets. “We were like shit, have we done something wrong here? Is Sydney not ready for this yet?” True to their word, there wasn’t a B&E roll in sight, but there were familiar touch-points with smorrebrod (open sandwiches) among the more ‘controversial’ dishes, like chazuke (tea-doused rice) with octopus, now a crowd-favourite. How freaked were you, I ask? “You always fear it’s not going to work, but my whole persona is to put your balls on the line,” says Jackson. “If people didn’t try, we wouldn’t have amazing places like Dominique Ansel Bakery out there. But, yeah, for the first three to four months...”
Above: Jackson serving a customer at the original Edition Coffee Roasters in Darlinghurst.
Below: Japanese soufflé pancake with strawberries and cream.
Opposite page left: Daniel Jackson, co- owner of Edition Coffee Roasters.
Opposite page right: The dining room at Edition Coffee Roasters, Haymarket.
PHOTOGRAPHY: EDWARD TRAN