Coffee Garam

Hello everyone! Still remember me? The blogger that doesn't update her blog that much?? I know I know.. haven't been writing for a while. Was just so tired all the time in the last couple weeks. Started a new role at work, but still can't get rid of the old role, so pretty much doing 2 jobs now. Then there was the day when I had to wake up at 3:45am to get to the warehouse at 5am. Or the few days when I had to wake up at 5am to get to city at 7am. Not very fun :p Anyway, enough of me whinging about work. I'm sure everyone got their 'work stories' to tell. Plus it's weekend, I really should post something up before I lose all my readers. 
The other day I had to go to dentist for my stage 1 surgery for a tooth implant (*sigh* another long story about that but I should refrain from whinging too much here). So I thought I probably wouldn't be able to eat much after the surgery, so better to have a nice big breakfast before I went to see my dentist. So we went to this new cafe at Surry Hills - Coffee Garam (in Indian it means hot coffee). It has only been opened for about 1.5 months. 

Robin's flat white. No, it wasn't the waitress fault that the coffee spilt. I did that :p I was turning the coffee to take a photo and I turned it too quick. 

This was my mocha. It was very creamy. I like ordering mocha because I like eating the froth with the chocolate powder :) 

Robin's English Breakfast - $8.99 with free coffee. There was fried egg, bacon, mushroom, baked beans, roasted tomato and one slice of toast. Serving was very generous. While the mushrooms smelt nice and garlicky, but they tasted a bit sour. Still, for just $9, I don't think there are many places that can beat that. 

This was my Turkish Delight $9.99 - toasted white bread with mayo, turkey breast, lettuce, red onions, cheese and plenty of seeded mustard. There's 1 thing that I didn't notice till I looked at the photo of the menu just then. It says "All sandwiches $7.50 with a can of drink!". So sandwich alone is $9.99, but with a can of drink it's $7.50 ? I think $7.50 with drinks has to be the price for takeaway. 


We had a bit of chat with the owner Harvey in between waves of customers that came in for their coffee in the morning. His idea was to create a new breed of cafe - fusion of Australian and Indian. While there were the familiar sandwiches and fried eggs, there were also some Indian snacks that Harvey had added to the menu. 

He got us to try the specialty of his cafe - Masala Chai. Apparently the masala that Harvey used at his shop was home made! It was basically tea with some spices like cinnamon/ ginger. Surprisingly good! I wasn't so sure about it before my first sip, but it turned out to be something very refreshing. 

We also tried an Indian snacks - Dabeli $3. We were quite full before we ordered the extra snack, then I thought $3, it should be something small like a curry puff that I could share half with Robin. So I ordered it. Turned out, it was like a burger!!! It was basically a burger bun with filling that was made with sweet potato mix, pomegranate, onions, green chutney and tamarind chutney topped with roasted peanuts and coriander. Robin couldn't really eat it because it was too spicy for him. I didn't mind the spiciness though. It was a bit of savoury, a bit of sweet, and the roasted peanuts added crunchiness to the otherwise mushy mix. Very interesting snack. The only problem I had was that the filling kept on falling off. 
Overall it was quite a nice cafe. New, modern, good place to just sit, relax and have some light meals. Staff was very friendly too. 1 thing that we thought could be improved was how quickly the drinks/food got served. We had to wait quite a while for our coffee and food to arrive. Then we had to wait quite a bit again for the our second round of order with the masala chai. Some people came in to order a cup of coffee for takeaway and they had to wait too. Not a big issue for us since we were just killing time before going to dentist, but I think for people that came in for coffee on the way to work, they probably might like their coffee served quicker. 


Coffee Garam
29-37 Bellevue Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Tel: (02) 8065 1941




We went there in the morning, so no problem at all with lighting. It had big panels of glass across the front of the shop to let plenty of light in. The cafe was very spacious too. 


*Robin and YW dined as guests of Coffee Garam