The Lab Cafe

no fuss, hole in the wall type café. Great Italian style coffee and authentic Italian staff thrown in.
No single origin served here, just good strong coffee and always consistent.
Well worth a try if you’re in the area, even if there’s a line up you won’t wait long.

This place is a solid, no-​nonsense, consistent, get-​your-​coffee-​and-​go shop in the Hunter St Arcade. Even if there’s a big queue, it never takes long.
It’s high on the list of places to get coffee from in my office, and most of the people I work with are low-​latency programmers — so when they need coffee it needs to be good.
They don’t have much else besides coffee, just a few pastries.

Got I miss this place. When I lived in Sydney, this is where I got my coffee ever morning! It got so bad that when I changed offices to the other side of the CBD, I walked twenty minutes out of the way every morning just to get one of their delicious muffins and the perfect coffee.

Yeah, okay. Maybe this place is 4 stars is Sydney, but I give it 3 on the Melbourne scale. My coffee was really, really okay. Nothing spectacular at all.
I had high hopes too.
I did like the pre-​packed lunch sacks of muffins. My apple crumble looked really tempting, but kind of left me feeling very average too.
Not likely to go back, but not horrible. There must be good coffee in Sydney.

Good coffee. Probably one of the best I’ve had in the area. This is just coffee. No sitting area. There is some muffins and stuff, but mainly the coffee. Probably the best part of the experience is the Italians that work there. The coffee is a bitter bean, so if you like ‘lighter’ coffee, don’t drink here. But the coffee is not as good as Blue birds or Klinks.

Great coffee made by Italians. Just coffee and a few muffins biscuits. Staff are friendly and the service is quick besides the fact they are always busy.

Thought it worth another try of this nice little hole in the wall and was at first please to see that they had done some work on the shop since i was last there. Feeling optimistic I ordered a dbl mac and waited. Noticing a regular cup in the background I asked if I could use it rather than a takeaway cup, but was told that they only use takeaway cups. Fair enough… I guess…
Either way, with only 1 person in front of me I thought that a café focused on only takeaway coffees would quickly see me on my way… I was wrong. So not only did they not have tables and chairs, nor regular coffee cups, they now also had slow service…
And then the coffee arrived… and it looked… disgusting. The crema was bubbling and burnt through and through. Looking more like an overcooked brownie, it certainly did not resemble the coffee I had here last time. It found the closest garbage bin I could find… and I set of in search of another café.
Wont be coming back here again any time soon… :-(
Café Summary
— — — — — — — —
Passion for Coffee — ⁵⁄₁₀
Coffee beans — Di Lorenzoi
Crema (1=burnt, 10=velvet) — ³⁄₁₀
Special coffees avail? — N/​A

This is a real no-​nonsense coffee lovers paradise. With no seats and no food on offer, all the customers are there for one purpose and one purpose only: those addictive little black beans.
I found this place submerged in custom whilst all the coffee spots around it lay quiet, this is clearly saying something about the quality in The Lab. My coffee was rich, creamy and ever so slightly smoky, classing it as ideal in my book.
It came in a fun red and white striped cup which I’m sure is a bit of a signature among the coffee crowds.
It didn’t hurt that there was a rather attractive barista either.