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Burwood cafe Pillar’s focus is specialty coffee, one of the foundations of its three owners’ life passions, but you might first be struck by its interior.

Set like a wedge of concrete cut with a giant’s bread knife, its interior seats are essentially two giant light grey wall steps near a smattering of black stools.

People sit on the giant ledges like they’re hanging in space or visiting The Matrix. The front wall is entirely glass so they’re not far off artworks, especially as this is a cafe bereft of plump cushions or rustic wooden chairs or walls stuck with theatre posters up to the ceiling.

Co-owner Edwin Luo, who opened Pillar with Uel Lim and Nathaniel Tong in October 2022, says the minimal design is a casual, deregulated space that welcomes all.

“I don’t blame you if you look at it and think it doesn’t look warm and inviting,” he says. “But we really want people to feel part of the family when they come inside.”

He also wants them to try the cafe’s bevy of curated brews, each selected from established and micro roasters and filling the air with a fragrant coffee aroma.

Menus and shelves feature beans from Newav Coffee, Brenda Coffee and Path from Melbourne, alongside Eastwood’s Block Coffee and more established Sydney bean boffins Skittle Lane and Haven Specialty Coffee.

Haven is the reason Luo decided coffee was his focus. While studying at the Australian Institute of Music’s Surry Hills campus, he spent breaks searching for above-average brews.

“Then this new cafe opened,” he says. “Haven Specialty Coffee. I didn’t realise coffee could be a taste that was more than just bitterness.

“Tastes of different fruits, different chocolates, different levels of acidity and body. I didn’t realise coffee could go that deep.”

Luo tried different roasts, explored single origins and sampled every coffee-making process. He brought friends, got them hooked and a coffee club of sorts began.

“That’s how Pillar started,” he says. “A lot of good friendships bonded over coffee. That’s what we want to continue with people visiting us.”

On a drizzly Saturday afternoon, a few metres from the crowds and packed shops of Burwood Plaza, Pillar is a mix of serenity and baristas and cafe staff ribbing each other over the coffee machine.

They explain various roasts, batch and cold brews, citrusy house-made midnight fizz and a mighty hot chocolate made with single origin chocolate from Silver Street chocolatiers in Arncliffe.

On the front counter are sculptural slices of 15cenchi Basque cheesecake, with flavours swinging from plain to Earl Grey, matcha and Hojicha milk tea, ready to serve.

The cake, which is gluten-free, is presented on 1616/arita Japan porcelain plates. Coffee comes in matching, handle-free porcelain vessels which retain a hot drink’s heat and come with saucers resembling unfolded origami paper.

Coffee devotees, or the curious, can order flights – trays featuring four kinds of coffee. “It’s like a coffee degustation,” Luo says. “If you don’t know what to order, it’s a small version of different brews.”

There’s also tea, ranging from Cascara’s Bolivian dried coffee cherry to oolong, green and white, and house-made sodas.

There’s also food that may come from a kitchen Luo describes as “really just a sandwich press and an oven” but includes four excellent savoury dishes, some a nifty take on cafe regulars.

The best is Chashu Mashu, Pillar’s reinvention of an egg and bacon roll. Pillowy shokupan, or Japanese milk bread, holds tender braised pork belly, egg salad, sweet and salty pork floss topped with nutty furikake, red chilli yuzu kosho mayonnaise, chilli honey and chives.

Another is Holy Psalmon, a light and lolling mix of salmon rillettes, sour cream, green apple, dill, chives on fat shokupan, spritzed with lemon.

Things feel calm in Pillar’s exacting surrounds. Even the name and signage outside, featuring three black lines, two taller than the other, is carefully thought through.

“Pillar is named after the first thing we saw when we walked in here,” Luo says. “A pillar. It also represents support for others. And, one of the three of us is shorter than the others.”