MOON & BACK Cafe, Rosebery

MOON & BACK Cafe is a café in Rosebery that specialises in chiffon sandwich cakes, teas and coffees as well as Croffles (a hybrid of a croissant and waffle). But is the food as tasty as it is photogenic at this popular café?

The layout of MOON & BACK takes me aback when I arrive. There are no chairs and tables in the café. Instead there's a clever use of a small space with tiers of seating on one side with the display opposite.

Ivy and I get to ordering - arriving at 12:45pm means that the cafe rapidly fills up by 1pm. The menu is neat but full of covetable options. There are also candles and ceramics on sale on shelves and dotted around the cafe.

Coffee is by Artificer but we are more tea people. It's an iced matcha latte for me which is perfect in sweetness and matcha level. Ivy has a peach black tea soda which is sweet with a lovely strong tea flavour to it without being overly bitter or tannic. I sometimes find iced teas vary quite a lot and this is definitely one of my favourite ones.

Savoury lovers have one option: the ham and cheese croffle. Croffles are basically like a croissant squashed in a waffle maker so that it resembles a diamond shaped waffle. This one is topped with honey leg ham and Swiss cheese that is melted under the grill and it's pretty damn delicious. "I could eat another one," I say to Ivy between greedy bites. "I could eat a dozen more," she says.

We also tried the sweet croffle with a pyramid of maple butter on top. The butter is starting to melt but is still intact and holy heavens it is good. I suddenly have dreams of unearthing my waffle maker and having these all through December leaving the house only to buy more croissants.

The chiffon sando flavours change daily and this one is a matcha chiffon cake with fresh cream and sweet azuki beans. I love the level of sweetness and softness of chiffon cakes and this presentation is just gorgeous. Ivy marvels at the lightness of her first ever chiffon cake. The yuzu baked cheesecake has a layer of yuzu syrup on top and is light with a thin layer of cookie base and a creamy body with a nice hit of yuzu.

The canelé comes in two sizes, a small and large and it is a sake flavoured canelé with matcha powder on top. It is the only thing that perhaps misses a beat. The shell is thick and hard and very dark, more black than the typical caramelised dark brown outer and the inside is denser than I've had.

We look around and not a single person hasn't taken pictures of their food or done some sort of photo shoot of their cakes (including us). And we're full but not stuffed even thought we basically ate most of the cake menu bar a couple of items. Were we tempted to order more? Yes indeed we were.

So tell me Dear Reader, do you like short menus? Have you ever ordered the entire menu at a place? Do you like canelés?

This meal was independently paid for.

MOON & BACK Cafe

Shop7/2 Crewe Pl, Rosebery NSW 2018
Monday to Friday 7:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Saturday 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Sunday 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM