Guild

The Verdict

“The concept is an almond milk bar,” says Guild owner Cameron Earl (AKA the founder of Almond Milk Co.) 

When it comes to milking almonds, this guy knows his shit. In fact, he's just opened a new vegan-friendly cafe inside the State Library’s new Russell St Welcome Zone. It’s a pretty sweet gig, really.

“We’re very lucky,” Cam says. “It’s a captured market. They’re gonna get 1.5m people through here in the first year alone. That’s a lot of almond milk.”

Guild isn’t massive—just a counter, a cabinet and some milk churners revolving in the background. But it’s exactly what this space needs. Something light and quick and on-the-go (nearly everything is served in environmentally-friendly takeaway cups and bowls).

So what can you get here? Well almond milk lattes are definitely on the cards (plus every other milk you can imagine). The guys are also slinging pastries from Hamptons Bakery, cookies from Windsor Deli and vegan protein balls from Eat Well Co.

Everything else is done in-house by the guild team. As you might expect, vegetarian and vegan options feature pretty heavily, but Cam says he’s happy to customise.

“What we’ve done is start with everything vegan or veggo,” he says, “and people can add protein if they want. Rather than the other way around. We’re hoping it’s setting a new precedent that will catch on.”

Being your classic 'proxivores' (we eat whatever's close to hand), we headed straight for the chicken sourdough roll, herb’d up with dill, chives, spinach and housemade mayo. Bloody delish. The vegan brekky ramen also went down a treat—a silky broth with two types of kombu and some peppy pickled ginger (“That one’s still a work in progress,” says Cam.)

The best thing we ate at Guild was actually a salad (shock horror). This thing was so effing yum—turmeric baked cauliflower, little pomegranate rubies, a squeeze of orange juice, coconut yogurt dressing and some spicy dukkha on top. The perfect mid-morning snack.

Cam says the food will be running all day. So if you’re studying at State till 11pm, the ramen can tide you over. If you’re here first thing in the morning, it might be a double-shot almond latte and gluten-free banana bread (baked in-house by the team).

Sit yourself down at the massive Russell St windows, plug in the laptop and tuck in. This might be our new favourite city workspace. 

Image credit: Sammy Green