The term “Sloane ranger” isn’t common in Australia. But the jibe is more familiar to class-conscious Britons: it’s a name for young, upper-class people wearing informal but expensive country clothes in London. Their natural habitat is Sloane Square in the city’s south-west.
Shri Bhagwandas (also of BAWA) has borrowed the term for the name for his new cafe to honour Cremorne’s surrounding garment district.
The space has exposed pipes, polished-concrete floors and large bi-folding windows that lend it an industrial feel. Olive-green and grey curtains are draped over the sleek finished concrete walls, creating a soft and slightly elegant feel to balance things out. The walls are lined with half-halo eclipse wall lights.
The menu ranges from grab-and-go options, such as salads and Cobb Lane pastries, to larger all-day breakfast and lunch dishes, such as the mildly spiced chilli scrambled eggs with bacon, Meredith feta and manchego. Or there’s the Ranger Bowl, with miso-roast salmon, pickled cabbage, soy beans, cucumber, avocado and nori. And the breakfast and/or dessert toffee-apple crumpets, with Cremorne-based Dr Marty’s Crumpets, mascarpone, candied pistachios, vanilla fairy floss and blackberry compote.
Bhagwandas was one of the original baristas at Dukes Coffee Roasters and has since worked with Peter Frangoulis (also Dukes) at Story Coffee & Foodstore in Docklands. So there’s a strong coffee legacy at Sloane Ranger, which naturally uses Dukes beans.
