Element 6

Excellent brunch and coffee. I have really enjoyed the chicken burger, too. I have probably been here 5 or 6 times and have never had to wait more than a couple of minutes for a table. Food normally takes around 20 minutes to come out.

Coffee is great here. Good selection of breakfast available although they can use a bit more variety by adding eggs benedict or omeletes. Ingredients are fresh and very well prepared. Overall a great experience. The place is small and can get a bit busy on weekends. We had to wait for 15mins to get a table on a sunday

I highlighted this as a red flag in my initial review and now I’ll say it has finally come to fruition. Their serving processes are not scalable with the increased demand, and now it’s ruining your relaxing breakfast experience, and management refuses to improve it.
Waiting 15 minutes for a table is completely fine. As most would agree. What is not fine, however, is being sat and literally waiting another 15 minutes before a staff member even acknowledges your presence.
When they first opened and went through the regular teething issues of growth, poor service could be shrugged off.
The food isn’t bad and they used be the only café in the area so most people would overlook these transgressions.
As Mr. Dylan would say, times they are a changing. This isn’t the Vietnam war but success is still based on beating out the competition. And the good news for us is that there are now several good cafes within walking distance — the closest being literally next door.
It may at first appear like I’m being heavy handed with this review but let’s be clear, after 10 – 12 visits of seeing the same thing each time, it’s no longer a one off thing. It’s the status quo. And we know that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.
I sincerely hope we start getting some objective reviews on the service of this café because as long as their management team continues to think everything is fine… nothing will improve.
GL

I’ve seen so many photos on Instagram and Facebook that i was really looking forward to this café. I think it is worth going here for the food, however what lets this café down is the coffee. The coffee here is no where near as good as other cafés in the area. Serving Double Roasters, the coffee here is drinkable but very far from good. To put it bluntly I order a strong coffee and tasted weaker that a normal cup.
However, putting the coffee aside the food here is good. Plates being on the larger serving, the plates look as good as they taste. Sadly nothing quite original about the food — most of the plates are stock standard. But there is nothing wrong with some standard dishes. They are standard for a reason.
On the plus side the service here is also good, extremely friendly and happy to help. There are two or three tables outside and a handful of tables inside. So you might not be able to find a table and this place is popular. So come early or be prepared to wait.

I used to think that drinks in jars only lived in a 10 km radius of the CBD but alas they’ve migrated west and are now found in the innocent ‘burbs in unlikely hipster cafes like Element 6. Thankfully this place isn’t just looks — backed up by a creative menu and good coffee, E6 is a gem in the rough, shabby chic amongst actual shabby.
I loved the internationally inspired menu with dishes like Huevos Rancheros, an ‘Ode to Borough Markets’ cheese toastie, coconut sticky rice porridge and my fave, fried eggs with tomato herb salad and dukkah on beetroot spread and flatbread — YUM!
The coffee’s probably the best espresso style coffee in this neck of the woods, which isn’t a hard feat but they don’t let that be an excuse, treating the 5 Senses beans with respect and producing a great cup, whether the milk, black or iced.
It’s great to have just one more option on my short list of local café gems but if I were you, I wouldn’t make a special trip here if I lived further afield — keeps the line shorter for me!

Excellent food, polite and friendly service. Bacon and egg sandwich was a perfect 10. For the salmon on rye, the poached egg was impeccable! But not the best to put the tough parsley for green. Nice cold long black in a madon jar and chai latte was good. It was too hot outside today.

When I first found Element6 I was really happy to find a café in this neck of the woods with 5 Senses coffee. Unfortunately I’ve just found out that 3 months ago they switched to Double Roasters.
Whole otherwise still a great café, the difference coffee wise between this café and others in the area has dropped significantly. Still drinkable if you are in the area, but not something worth travelling to just for coffee.
Coffee: Double Roasters
Passion: ⁶⁄₁₀
Crema: ⁷⁄₁₀

Been waiting for an opportunity to visit and finally we went. IT WAS GREAT! Good service, great coffee and beautiful food! What a gem!

Summary:
The best café you’ll find in the Eastwood/​Epping/​ryde area.
Decent food and coffee.
Small café, with tables quite close together. Friendly wait staff.
3 stars

Was asked if I wanted to have brunch «at the hipster café» so I actually thought this was its name, haha.
It certainly lives up to its reputation — the décor is unabashedly hipster, with drinks coming in mason jars, water served in dark amber bottles, and some of the tables outside — well, not proper tables.
We came on Saturday morning at around 11 AM, and the place was packing. We put our name down and waited for around 30 minutes before we got a table. This would probably be my only complaint about the place. The staff were friendly, but due to the busy-​ness of the place they couldn’t seem to keep track. When we were next on the list there was a table that had become free but since they were rushing about they hadn’t realized that there was a free table and there were still a list of people waiting — it was only when we brought it up that they said yes, that was indeed our table and we could sit there. Otherwise, they were super friendly, though — accommodating our request to move the table off to the side (the one we were initially given was outside without any shade and it was hot!) and delivering the food quickly.
I ordered the rosemary garlic mushrooms with haloumi, roast tomato and baby spinach on organic sourdough. This was amazing. (Even better, the butter was served separately — I’m not a big butter person and ended up not using any, so this was a plus for me.) While this sounds like a smörgåsbord of stuff I’d have to say it’s really a mushroom show. Large, juicy, tasty mushrooms, and everything else felt like a complement to the mushrooms. Mushrooms with bread. With poached eggs. With haloumi. With tomatoes and spinach. Hehe. Mushrooooooms!
We went back later that day to grab cold drinks — I got a honeybee smoothie.

Read the reviews and decided to try for ourselves. Bug tip get there before 10. We lucked out and we’re able to get a table. It was outside and it was freezing. We loved the coffee and the staff were super quick in coming for our drinks order and gave us sufficient time to decide on what to have. We loved the atmosphere. Yes it was crowded but everyone was there for the great food. Only issue was that they put the hot food on cold tin plates. Combine that with sitting outside and the food was cold by the time we got there. A café that knows how to poach a good egg and their corn fritter/​bread was lovely with the onion jam. Will definitely go back and try something else.

After reading the reviews and seeing the photos of Element 6, I had high expectations for this café. But unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to the expectations or reviews.
Firstly, the coffee was just bad. Sorry no other word for it. Both taste and aesthetics wise!
Secondly, although we didn’t have to wait long for our table, we were sat at one of the bigger shared tables, which was definitely not ideal if you are trying to have a conversation across the wide table with your friend in a very noisy café. The individual tables are also spaced very closely together which definitely does not give a sense of a relaxing café.
The service staff were all friendly and it didn’t take long for them to take our orders. But I must say the food and drinks were very slow. I think it would have been at least ½ hour or more before our food and drinks arrived.
We ordered the Granola with yogurt, berry compote and poached fruit, the smoked salmon egg benedict and coconut bread. We were expecting the granola to be presented nicely in the glass jar with a side of poached fruit (as seen in the photos uploaded by others). But it just came out in a bowl with like 1 and bit piece of poached fruit. Surely they could have served it with more poached fruit than that! The smoked salmon Egg benedict was average. On the positive, the coconut bread was nice.
I am not quite sure what the fuss is all about and perhaps I got a bad morning of food service but I don’t think I would be heading back to Element 6 anytime soon.

Super yummy! I keep coming back for the chubby bacon and egg roll :)
Service is kind of slow though and the café is quite cramped. Would give 4.5 but Unilocal won’t let me!

Amazing service and great food!
There is such a unique selection of food available and the iced coffee was amazing.
The décor is cute and quirky.
Could use a bit more seating on the outside though, and maybe longer opening hours.

The coffee is good, but the breakfast I had this morning is not as good as the picture shows. Much less fruit.
However, the service is very nice and the containers are creative:) It’s a special café in West Ryde.

tl;dr; If travelling to Surry Hills is a little far to go from the Ryde area, Element 6 will happily satisfy your café cravings but it will cost just as much.
Crossing the threshold, I had a flashback to the wardrobe in Narnia. It felt like we had stepped from Rydeale Road West in to Crown Street. With West Ryde’s train station car park just across the road and nothing much else around, Element 6 feels a little bit out of place with its surrounds — the «lol only café in West Ryde» Tracey said.
It’s like it had fallen out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine — wood, brick and rough paint jobs adorned recycled tip jars and coffee glasses, rustic crockery and wall fixtures perfect for countless Instagram opportunities (if I philosophically believed in the app).
Having not eaten yet that day we ordered a main each and shared a third together.
The pulled pork I ordered had that satisfyingly thigh-​widening taste without being too oily. The red cabbage on the bun helped balance the fattiness.
T’s Reuben sandwich had good balance and was well constructed with a bit of beef, pickle and cheese in each bite. The cheese had a gentle yet effective smoked flavour which complemented the salty beef and tart pickles.
Lastly our salad had a most interesting dressing that T remarked some people may not like but we both found very appeasing. Tangy and very citric, it reminded me peculiarly of a lemon cheesecake. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted fantastic, however they magicked lemon cheesecake tossed between the leaves.
I also had their iced coffee with «serendipitous ice cream». Not sure why they though it was by chance I paid an extra $ 2 for ice cream and a very milky and weak coffee. While they only listed a hot mocha that used Belgium chocolate on the menu, they reassured T they could make her an iced mocha. Whether they actually used Belgium chocolate we will never know because the drink that later appeared, appeared exactly the same as mine — save for some chocolate down the bottom.
All up our combined meal cost roughly $ 55. Had we not been such fatties and only ordered two mains it still would have been a $ 40 affair. Element 6 is good but as I posed to T while we sat there, would it be special had it been opened in Surry Hills?

Element6 is a great little café located right near the West Ryde station.
The food here is absolutely delicious, coffee is pretty good too.
We had the french toast and AVocado & egg, Garlic tomatoes with spinach.
The honey smoothie is divine.

This is the best thing to happen in West Ryde.
The décor is quirky, much like the vibe of the place.
There is a great selection of yummy food and drinks, totally unique compared to the other chain cafes in the area. I’m not a coffee drinker so I can’t comment on their coffee, but the cold drinks are awesome and come served in mason jars.
The staff are friendly and make you feel like a guest in a nice country vintage home.
It would be good though if they were open on Sundays, I reckon this would be a great place for a laidback Sunday brunch.

This is one hidden gem of a café! The décor is modern and out there while being inviting still… the furniture is made of old parts of pallets and things people would throw out. The cold drinks are served in jars with handles. The food is good, filling and well priced. The service was fantastic.
The café, although we just about found it, was very busy and obviously has a good customer base who return for the good food, service etc!
Hidden gem!!!

Great café on the east side of the station. Friendly service, cozy place and fantastic coffee!