When someone knows of a cafe serving cinnamon doughnuts filled with ricotta, and served with honey, peach and ginger crumb, you sit up and take notice.
You plant yourself beside this cafe's nearly three-metre-high wall of living ferns, yucca and creeper, and pour honey from a tiny glass jug over the grilled peach and pillow-like doughnut, mixing it through piles of toasted crumble, and eat it post haste.
Mr, a cafe and bar on Darling Street, is the creator of this small wonder of pastry, fruit and sweetness-infused crunch. It is beautiful to look at and, on a chilly morning, richly satisfying to eat.
Barely three months old, Mr is slender in size, a long rectangle open to the street with whitewashed brick walls and geometric timber designs.
The open kitchen is home to Greer Rochford, formerly of Pig and Pastry in Petersham. and a self-trained pastry chef. She makes all Mr's baked goods and, if she comes out of the kitchen, I will spontaneously hug her for the majestic breakfast doughnut.
She also deserves praise for Greer's Secret BBQ sauce that adorns my Mr Muffin, a fluffy English muffin filled with plump scrambled eggs, grilled ham off the bone and tasty and American cheese.
Everything is fab, including a platter of turmeric-pickled egg with avocado, cherry tomatoes, char-grilled ham, cheddar cheese, fig, dark rye toast, cumin salt and a rosti. This menagerie of colour, shapes and flavour spins around a dainty watercress salad and is, again, beautiful to view and eat.
Rochford has a background in art and is clearly big on visual effect. Colours are paramount on the Mr menu, from the slices of blushing pink pickled radish decorating the salad to the tiny purple edible flowers sprinkled over the doughnut. Oh, the doughnut.
The only issue is the coffee. It is rich and smooth, from beans by Will & Co, but arrives 45 minutes late, lost in the rush of orders. Staff are terrifically attentive, bringing water without request and offering a great knowledge of the menu.
Mr has a compact range of 12 breakfast dishes, including a fabbo-looking cheeseburger with mustard and pickles being eaten by a plumber at the next table. After 10am, there is also the option of ordering a cocktail, beer, cider or glass of wine with your eggs, granola or three-cheese toastie.
I consider a Mr Mimosa, prosecco with strawberry and grapefruit puree, or even spiking a pineapple mint refresher with vodka or Veuve Clicquot.
But instead I tightly grasp the now-arrived flat white in relief. Two tables up I see a lady pouring honey from her tiny glass jug over grilled peach and ricotta-stuffed doughnut before stirring it through piles of ginger crumb.
I may go over and sit next to her in a minute, once again enjoying Mr's doughnut time.
MR.
418 Darling Street, Balmain
0401 557 387
Daily, 7am-4pm
THE PICKS
Cinnamon doughnut; turmeric-pickled egg platter
THE COFFEE
Will & Co
THE LOOK
White-washed brick, timber banquettes and luscious living green wall
THE VALUE
Good. Grilled ham, egg and cheese muffin, $8; cheeseburger, $15
NEARBY
Snatch a swim in autumn's last warm days at Dawn Fraser Baths, Elkington Park, Balmain