Pablo & Rusty’s Premium Espresso

Good menus and great coffee, reasonable prices and most of the time there is no waiting.
Being opposite the train station and Gordon’s favourite, the copper pan with its overcrowded masses, Pablo handles very well.
And even more so, comfortable outside seating which is great.

Gordon’s Pablo & Rusty’s has been a mainstay on my list of great cafes for the last few years. Positioned in a relative dead area for coffee, it has always provided a welcome reprieve from the average coffee found in the surrounding suburbs. Also given that they are open 7 days a week, they can be a lifesaver.
As for their quality, I have found that compared to the rest of the Pablo & Rusty’s cafes, this is my favorite. The staff are generally quite passionate about the quality of their coffee, and have the skill level to play around with it. While the chance you’ll get a great coffee here is quite high, on occasion it can taste quite commercial, but that has more to do with the roast than the café.
Certainly for the area, these guys are worth checking out.
Passion: ⁸⁄₁₀
Crema: ⁸⁄₁₀
Coffee: Pablo & Rusty’s

I like the coffee here a lot. Highly recommended!
Come here for coffee and a simple, quick bite. Menu is limited but food was tasty. They use really good quality sourdough bread in their sandwiches.
They open early for breakfast at 6am so that was very handy for workers catching the train.

Oh my goodness… the temptation. Why is it that if I am anywhere near the Gordon train station, my body is magnetically pulled across the street to Pablo & Rusty’s?
Could it be the wonderful vanilla latte? Maybe it is the friend staff? Who cares? It is a place I can’t resist.
There is limited seating inside, but the patio area is lovely.
There might be a bit of a wait to get your coffee, but ah… the moment it hits your tongue, you no longer care how long it took.

I’m going to put it out there — unlike everyone else in the WORLD (slash on the North Shore), I don’t think Pablo & Rusty’s is particularly exceptional.
Sure, it’s good — there’s great parking, I guess?
The coffee is yummy — it’s really good, but I wouldn’t make the journey to Gorden for it, which plenty of people seem up for.
The food is also quite nice — but again, nothing too amazing.
I like the décor, but I don’t like the crowds of obsessives who seem to LOVE Pablo and Rusty’s and choose to spend their weekends inside the shop. It’s good, but not THAT good!

I’ve already declared my undying love to Pablo & Rusty (
) so it should come as no surprise that I wish to wax lyrical about this Gordon store.
Firstly the baristas deal a mean trade. Sure they’re all young and beautiful hipster types, but don’t go judging a barista by his tats and tight jeans: these guys know exactly what they’re doing.
Today’s trip to Pablo & Rusty’s was ostensibly to buy a bag of coffee beans (Yes, I’m that addicted. Plus $ 35 gets you 1kg and a free coffee!). But then I spied the chicken, caramelised onion and pumpkin sandwich ($ 8.50 on Sonoma bread — swoon!) and I decided I’d stick around for lunch. Chatting to the staff while my sandwich was heated up, I was pleased to see them disassemble the sandwich to toast (i.e. the spinach leaves came off so they wouldn’t go limp under the grill). That kind of attention to detail is definitely a cut above the rest.
Sinking my teeth into this luscious sandwich, I couldn’t believe this was my first time actually eating at Pablo & Rusty’s. Now I can see why people hang out here all afternoon — from the school kids to the flannel wearing uni-​students, punctuated by caffeine desperate business types — it turns out I’m not the only one to fall for this coffee shop.
You see, they had me at Pablo.

Pablo & Rusty’s has all you want in a café and more. They seriously know their stuff when it comes to coffee. According to one of my mates, it’s their single origin coffee beans that make a world of difference. For those of you that may not know, single origin means the coffee beans come from the one place as opposed to sourcing them from a mix of places — this gives the coffee a distinct flavour.
Step across the road from Gordon station and you’ll find this Pablo & Rusty’s is always packed to the brim, full of regulars chilling for their afternoon catch up. The staff here are young, good looking, and most importantly, attentive to your coffee needs. They have a small seating area outside which is on a reasonably quiet corner (most of the traffic comes from pedestrians leaving the station), which is a good idea considering the inside can get quite packed some times.

If you want outstanding coffee by all means come here. If you want luscious banana bread or pear and raspberry bread or apple and walnut bread or eggs with avocado on sourdough come here. However. If your goal is to find a friend the long communal table is just that, a table, so please, don’t do as one particular guy does to me, and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to your hapless, coffee-​drinking, sunshine-​lovin’ seatmate. Ok. Now that that is off my chest .
The café staff are truly the best thing about this place. Nevermind that they’re young, good-​looking, well-​mannered, quick on their feet, the first ones to say hello, great baristas, sandwich makers and water bearers, and clearly all non-​gamblers. Ignore all that. The greatest thing about them is that they listen and at rare times, offer genuine and heartfelt advice. If you want a soy cappuccino with apple and walnut bread — not toasted with nothing sprinkled on the top — they get it right. If you want a large skim cappuccino with banana bread — not toasted with nothing sprinkled on the top — they get it right. If you want a muffin — cold please — they come and give it you but then, by way of explanation and apology, they will say as the awesome manager Julian did once, «this muffin is almost rock hard. It’s the butter in it. You sure I can’t give you something else that you can bite into cold?» And then you do as they say. This café has attained legend status among many in the north and now you know why.