Hopper Espresso – Perth

New places are popping up all the time in Perth, so I’m never surprised to come across a new restaurant, cafe or bar when I’m doing my usual back and forth between the shopping district and my apartment. Walking down the same road every time gets boring, so I sometimes try to change up the path. Today I took a stroll down Shafto Lane (between Hay and Murray) and noticed this new little cafe towards the Hay Street end. The name would suggest that coffee is their thing, however I noticed that they had a small range of lunch items. I hadn’t yet eaten lunch, so in I went!

Seats outside – great for a warm Perth summer

Before going anywhere to eat I can’t help but do a quick background check – Google search, Urbanspoon, Facebook page – to see whether I should bother going in, and what’s good on the menu (I bet a lot of you can relate). I noticed that they do pulled pork burgers, which I’m a sucker for. I cried a little bit inside when they didn’t seem to have any in the display cabinet (sold out perhaps? I did come a little late in the lunch hour), though I breathed a small sigh of relief when I noticed there were still home made pork meatball burgers available, which sounded almost as good.

Home made pork meatballs with tomato sauce in a bun

I’ve got to say it was pretty damn tasty! I don’t usually like to see food pre-prepared sitting in a window, but it was pretty good. It would have been nice to have a couple more meatballs, but they were tasty and the tomato sauce was not bland at all.

Macchiato with Five Senses coffee beans

When a place has “espresso” in its name, I’d normally hope that they can pull together a pretty decent coffee. Hopper Espresso had decent coffee beans (roasted by Five Senses) and a solid machine (Synesso), so the only thing that would really stand in the way from a good brew was a bad barista. Thankfully the stars lined up and I got a pretty decent fix. This excites me because there aren’t really many decent coffee locations in the West End of the city, so it is always great to see another option appearing (what would excite me even more is if it is open on the weekend – opening hours TBD!).

The workhorse of Hopper Espresso

It looks like they have a setup for filter coffee too, which I only realised after ordering my macchiato. Next time I’ll go back for a filter coffee and a pastry, or one of the Rawsome goods that they stock.

In general the place had a pretty chilled vibe. The usual clientele would usually comprise CBD workers on their lunch break, however, given that many people were away on the Christmas break, the cafe was pretty quiet for most of the time I was there. I’d imagine that it will get a lot busier when the new year starts and people head back to work.

Relaxed setting inside; a perfect place to chill out with a coffee and a book

Given that I work and live so close I’d probably come back, hopefully early enough next time to get a pulled pork burger.