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There’s a lovely balance between focus and breadth at Pancho, a cosy two-level cafe in Daylesford. The concision is there in the building. It’s petite yet poised, sweet and cottagey, with brick and timber finishes, tactile ceramics and hanging plants and a spiral staircase wending up to the second level like a fern frond seeking sunshine.

But there’s an expansiveness, too. It’s in the thoughtful service expressed, say, in batch brew coffee top-ups and blankets for dog companions sitting outside. It’s in the play of light skittering across the floorboards, and the many features that catch the eye and send the imagination journeying. A nook by a befogged
window is ready for either poet or muse. The fireplace is alive with fond crackles.

The food offering takes a similar line, turning restriction into a positive. The two-by-two-metre kitchen is so small the equipment shelves jut into the dining room. Nevertheless, the chefs run a high-impact menu, ambitious in its intention to delight but shrugging off any dalliance with crowd-pleasing.

There’s no smashed avocado, for example, you can have your eggs as you like as long as you like poached, and you’ll need to get your bacon elsewhere. Instead, there are dishes that work in the space and hit all the important cafe marks – comfort, health, savoury, sweet, seasonal – while spilling with flavour and
character.

I could eat the congee every day. Made with brown and jasmine rice, the soupy porridge is topped with poached chicken and egg, vibrant greens and pickled spring onion. There are background notes of seaweedy savouriness and a lifted tickle of five spice. It’s nourishing and subtle but amped as you wish with housemade chilli oil. A vegetarian version subs in sherry-roasted mushrooms.

The reuben sandwich is reimagined as a brunch melt with excellent pastrami by Salt Kitchen in Ballarat, a caraway sauerkraut that’s made here, oozy cheese and a red wine gravy bolstered by kitchen scraps and used as a kind of brekkie dressing. It’s an accomplished, humbly cheffy dish.

Lunchy stuff includes a hot beef roll made with slow-roasted oyster blade and Pancho’s pickles, and hummus loaded with golden cauliflower, chickpeas, shredded lamb shoulder and a tangle of herbs. It’s a sturdy, satisfying bowl of goodness, confident and balanced.

Pancho Cafe is owned by Tom Crowe and Lauren Bieber. That’s him cooking, that’s her wondering if you need a blanky. The couple started cafe and florist Mixed Business in Clifton Hill about 15 years ago and you can see the hospitality lineage in the indie approach and we-build-it-you-come trust in community.

They launched Pancho five years ago, a treechange project that’s treasured by locals and is a boon for visitors seeking sublime coffee, perhaps congee and certainly conviviality.