Padre Coffee

Nice place for a coffee on the East Brunswick part of Lygon Street. Spacious, fairy busy, cool tunes playing and most of all: great coffee (they roast their own beans).
Not sure if they sell food other than muffins and cupcakes and I couldn’t go past the small carrot cake on offer. I made the right decision as it was very good and not sickly sweet. Perfect.

Great coffee, really good savoury muffin and credible escargot. The gentrification continues apace

People please!
This place is WAY OVERRATED! Not only is this the tiniest menu I have ever seen the coffee lacked body and flavour!
I sat down an was totally ignored and then realised that the handsome gentleman who sat beside 5 minutes later was pounced upon by the waitress!
Don’t waste your time if you want a decent hot cooked meal as you won’t get it here!
#sorrynotsorry!

The best coffee on this end of Brunswick, if not even in all of Melbourne! I pass this place frequently on my way home and not once has it failed to deliver outstanding coffee, great service by the staff and good non pretentious atmosphere.
They also offer a small, but great, selection of sandwiches, cakes and juice. This is not a typical breakfast or brunch spot like most places, the coffee playes the center role here. But oh my is it worth it!

Easily my go-​to spot for a great cup of coffee to start the day. Seriously some of the nicest baristas too, the kind that remember your name. I usually get a cup and a pastry takeaway but the café also has a relaxed atmosphere if you’re looking to sit down, read the news, or people watch through the large windows at the front. Very cool that the Brunswick East Project is where Padre Coffee originated and that they still roast coffee here. Nice to see that they’ve expanded.

I’ve been wanting to stop by at Padre HQ for quite some time now and lucky for me, today was the day. I made a special coffee trip from all the way down in St. Kilda to try some of the well-​renowned coffee north of the city.
Now, I’ve been to the other Padre outlets in the markets but I’ve never actually managed to come out to The Brunswick East Project. Not nearly as hard to get to as I thought. I managed to get to the deceptively large café in under an hour on public transport from the South-​East suburbs.
It was morning tea for me and I was soon tucking into a blueberry muffin and a flat white. As much as I like Padre’s coffee, I’m not too sure about the milk they use. I made a mental note to myself to get black coffee from Padre from now on. That being said, I very much enjoyed my flat white and very much enjoyed watching them roast a new batch.
Padre are quite open and friendly when it comes to how they roast their coffee. You can sit in the café and curiously watch on through the big glass windows. I don’t know about you but I love everything to do with coffee roasting and this was a good opportunity to get a good view of how the masters do it.
I’m not sure when I’ll be back to Padre. I really need to get that black coffee. I suggest you do the same!

Fantastic coffee, lovely bread roll. I asked the staff for assistance buying some beans to take home and they were super helpful. I’ll definitely be back!

Probably the best coffee around Brunswick, always consistently good. Great service, the staff are always super friendly.
Not much of a food range but they make some pretty rocking classic sandwiches.

It says «no bloggers» on the door, so I am writing this review from home… far from the luscious smell of coffee roasting.
This is a coffee shop, nothing more nothing less…
Don’t come here expecting some sort of gourmet eggs or pancakes for breakfast. You won’t find them here. There are collection of muffins and other small treats but don’t be fooled, coffee is the hero here. I don’t know if they even serve tea (not that I am in the little bit interested in leaves in hot water)
So, head north on the tram, get off just before the end of Lygon St and enjoy some of the best coffee around… and then take a bag of fresh beans home to enjoy for the rest of the week!

I used to live around the corner from Brunswick East Project and boy do I miss it!
The coffee is amazing and on a visit since I’ve moved away, I noticed they now serve quesadillas for lunch… Yum!
I popped in recently to buy an Aeropress for home and got nothing short of lovely service from a very knowledgable staff member who made the whole experience fun. I’ll definitely be back next time I’m in the north!

Perfect location on the tram stop and on the way to school drop off ;)
padre just got better with new addition of lunch menu, courtyard seatings, and a mini shop for all your coffee needs, with long windows that looks straight into their new on site brewery.
Bliss me Padre, Bliss me.

Top coffee. Good muffins too.
Easy to miss on the footpath.

Coffee… as it was always intended to be. Smooth, light, subtle and delicious. These guys know what they’re doing. Recommended++

Extremely good coffee. Amazing breakfast tarts. Not much more needs to be said. Oh, there is one thing. Gabriel P nailed it when he talked about the bad signposting — I was one of those confused people pacing up and down Lygon St trying to find this damn place. Blink and you’ll miss it. Do trust your iPhone, as this joint does exist at the very place Google Maps is telling you!

This branch of Padre Coffee is called the Brunswick East Project, and it’s arrival has been a real blessing for coffee lovers of the northern suburbs.
Calling the café a project is quite apt seeing that the baristas here are on a constant quest to roast and refine their way through an ever growing range of seasonal beans and brewing techniques, then cataloguing their finds to expand on their library of roast information. Needless to say, the coffee you’ll be served here will be amongst the best in Melbourne.
The café can be quite cramped in the front room when there are customers queueing for their brew, and as there are only a few seats in this room, at most times, you will find at least a few customers standing about waiting. I find waiting here most challenging what with the tray of pastries, friands and muffins at the paying counter. I usually end up buying a friand or the breakfast tart, and I never regret it.
The back room is a really lovely space to enjoy many cups of coffee and read the papers. On your way out, pick up a bag of freshly roasted single origin to take home with you.

If you are serious about coffee then let me introduce you to the guys at the East Brunswick Collective (Padre as it is also known). They too are serious about coffee. In fact so much so that they have done away with the sourdough bread, smoked salmon and rocket salads to concentrate solely on roasting and serving up their own unique blends of coffee. And apart from a few titbits of fresh bakery delights they have delivered daily — coffee is indeed all they serve.
If you want to find Melbourne’s best coffee then I think you will be hard pressed to walk past Padres. Just make sure that you don’t make this mistake as, like so many cafes in Melbourne, it is badly sign posted and very small. So much so that I am pretty sure that the confused people walking up and down the Brunswick end of Lygon St are either in search of the perfect coffee or are named Angela (from the local homeless shelter).

Living in Melbourne, with its strong café culture, you find yourself drinking a nerve-​shredding amount of coffee. In fact it can all be a little bit bourgeois groundhog day. White walls, wooden floors, just a smidgen of vintage furniture and a hell of a lot of dukkah? If you’ve been to one of Fitzroy or Brunswick’s many cafés you’ve been to them all. The best way for café’s to distinguish themselves from the rest? Excellent coffee.
Padre Coffee/​The Brunswick East Project both roasts and makes just about the best coffee I’ve tried in Melbourne and boy are these guys serious about it. Selling a range of coffee making equipment and premium coffee making tools — I’m talking $ 100 tamps — alongside pastries and some damn fine coffee, Padre is hard to beat. My recommendation? One of Padre’s amazing flat whites with one of their buttery, sweet almost croissants. Bliss.
Offering ‘up to 15 single origins’ in their shops and experimenting with a mixture of brewing techniques and equipment ‘in search of the holy grail of coffee’, these guys certainly put the hard — brewing — yards in. If you love exceptional coffee you’ll love Padre. It really is that simple.

Part of a Melbourne Coffee Collective to which its mythology escapes me, Padre is found beyond a hairdresser and small time fruit merchant, both of which make the most of this. Those inside are split between rushing for a takeaway before the tram gets here (stop is just outside), taking up most of the standing room, and a rather secluded backspace where those with the luxury of time sit, eat, and enjoy.
The coffee is great — your expect it to be — with the barristas swapping tales of new technologies (apparently some coffee machines come with USB inputs to save settings for different coffees). The pasty selection is delivered early, so I’ve only seen it done so once. The sugary delicacies are a wonderful supplement to the coffee, and to those that can afford the time I highly recommend a light meal out the back.