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It’s worth setting your alarm for the Japanese curry scrambled egg muffin with Kewpie mayonnaise at Always in Crows Nest. It’s on the menu until 11am, and although prioritising weekend sleep-ins is understandable, I’d recommend skipping the snooze button and ensuring you get to this sandwich bar before its breakfast dishes are gone for the day.

Sure, this muffin can be easily cradled in one hand, but each bite leaves an outsized impact. Wedged between the slices of soft, grippable bread are sweet mayonnaise squiggles and scrambled eggs that are deeply spiced and salty, thanks to the Japanese curry mix.

You can get this with extra American cheese for a burger-like effect (yes, do it!) or bonus Spam. In the West, the sodium-rich tinned meat has such a low reputation it’s synonymous with junk email, but you’ll find it in Asian staples from Hong Kong to Hawaii; there’s even a Filipino boy band called All4Spam – check out their Spam Can! Make Me Fall In Love clip on YouTube (it features handsome men gazing at canned Spam in different flavours).

Sam Lee, the co-owner of Always, doesn’t need a Spam-appointed boy band to convince him of the luncheon meat’s salty power. “I’m Korean,” he says. “There’s an army stew [budae jjigae] that you put a lot of corned beef, Spam, sausages and some ramyun [noodles] in. You eat that and that’s really nice.”

A similar principle applies to his Japanese scrambled egg muffin. Once loaded with optional American cheese and Spam, it’s not the most nutritious dish in the world but it lights up your brain in the brightest of ways. It’s “mentally healthy food”, says Lee of this breakfast sandwich. “I love mentally healthy food,” he adds. I do, too. And the menu at Always is full of such dishes.

If you’re there before 11am, you can also get the curry-swirled eggs with buttered sourdough and add-ons (such as pig’s head sausages from LP’s Quality Meats). The all-day menu, meanwhile, focuses on Always’ specialty: build-your-own $14 focaccia sandwiches.

The pillowy slabs of bread come from Fiore in McMahons Point. Credit award-winning chef Josh Niland (a regular at Double Cross Dining Room, the nearby cafe that Lee also runs) for this – Lee first tried Fiore’s loaves at Niland’s Petermen restaurant. So Lee went to Fiore’s bakery the next day and bought 10 different sandwiches.

Fiore’s focaccia provides a sturdy delivery system for the many sandwich fillings you can request at Always. To prevent indecision, the cafe has an efficient system: tick your picks on a form before handing it over to staff. Start with one meat or plant-based option (protein options include Saison pork, native pepperberry salami, mortadella from LP’s Quality Meats, miso tuna and specials such as smoked chicken, while plant-based options feature avocado with basil kimchi or the Van Dec antipasto combination of char-grilled eggplant, roasted capsicums, sliced olives and basil pesto), add cheese (from provolone to stracciatella), choose extras (rocket, tomato, pickles – all free, so you could order the lot) and a sauce to finish (the chilli tomato relish is especially good).

In these budget-stretching times, the $14 pricetag seems generous, particularly as there are quality fillings to choose from: Lee pays $100 a kilo for the Mr Flax smoked salmon on his menu, while the basil kimchi is made in-house.

Lee has come a long way since his first barista job at 17 at Warringah Mall. “I didn’t even know what the decaf was,” he admits. Nowadays, he also runs Only Coffee Project down the street (with a new outlet opening in Artarmon later this year) and at Always, there’s a self-serve brew bar where you can fill up on great icy oat lattes (made with Primary Coffee’s Seasonal Espresso blend), medicinal iced teas (flavoured with Market Lane’s Bolivian cascara berries) or an ever-changing selection of filter coffee (such as the intriguing Alirio Munoz pink bourbon from Small Batch).

He might have opened Always in May, but this marks his seventh year running cafes in Crows Nest. “I really want this Always shop to be there for a long time,” he says. And given how welcome its food and prices are, Sydney should as well.