CAFÉ SCENE

URBAN ARTISANS

268/273 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, New South Wales 2131 Open Monday to Wednesday and Friday 6am to 5:30 pm, Thursday 6am to 9pm, Saturday and Sunday 7am to 4:30pm (02) 8056 6297

After 25 years working behind the scenes in the hospitality industry in financial advisory roles and a lifetime of travelling the world for good food and coffee, Roupinah Simonian jumped at the opportunity to open a café of her own with friend, experienced restaurateur Lisa Dolores.

“My husband [Shahe Simonian of Zanazan Studio] is an architect and was working on this project for another client, and it fell through. He rang me at work and asked ‘do you want to open a café?’ I resigned that day and started doing this,” she says.

Urban Artisans serves Zest Specialty Coffee’s Ceora blend for its milk beverage.

Zest says Urban Artisans is the first café in Australia to use the mix of beans from Brazil, India, and Sumatra. The coffee features flavour notes of butterscotch, Baileys’ cream, dark chocolate, and cherry.

For cold brew, Urban Artisans serves Ethiopian Tome, a natural processed coffee from the Guji region, with flavour notes of dried strawberry, mango, apricot, and blueberry.

The café rotates Zest micro-lots for its single origins.

“We could not have asked for better support,” Roupinah says.

“It’s only a young relationship – we switched