Roy Jr. — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

Roy Jr.'s is without doubt THE BEST cafe in Canberra (and Canberra has many wonderful high quality cafes).

I started coming at Roy's since the beginning of their opening earlier last year. The owner Nick and his lovely team (whose names I embarrassingly do not know) are not only the loveliest people, but also the most professional people I met more recently in the hospo scene in Canberra.

They all have a super positive attitude and I always leave with a smile after visiting whether I do take away or dine in. I often miss such attitude at other cafes where there seems to be little genuine interest in the customers. In the last few months, Roy's have become my go to coffee shop after a run or for a few hours of work.

I have visited many of Canberra's hip coffee shops, especially in Braddon and Civic, and personally I vote Roy's best oat flat white. Their ice coffee, sticky chai and smoothies are also delicious and on point every time. I have not tried much food yet from the menu, but the meals I have had have been great.

As a PhD student, I love writing/working from Roy's which is another major plus about the cafe as many other Canberra cafes are not designed or suitable for this. The cafe is an a big space with specific tables for working and charging your laptop/phone.

Finally, Roy's interior design is absolutely beautiful with a fresh yet classic modern Scandi look and they play the best electronic/modern indie pop background music (for example Jungle) that is not too districting for enjoying coffee or while working (the music in most other Canberra cafes is terrible and almost signals the customer should move on).

All in all, I only have very positive words to say about Roy's. Great to support a local cafe led by young (and super friendly) talent. Highly recommend Roy's!

On a very final note, to those people who complain about you are not able to split the bill for large groups, I have only ever been to cafes and/or restaurants where you cannot split the bill for groups. Yes, this is annoying and frustrating, but I really think this is an invalid reason for giving a lower overall score. Just my...

Went for Saturday lunch with my pregnant partner & a few friends. It's a very big space, but pretty empty for peak lunch time (12-2pm), only about 1/4 full.

The wait staff were nice enough, but very unaccommodating when it came to the menu. They have distinct lunch & breakfast menus, which is fine, but the breakfast menu does make it clear they can do eggs all the standard ways. This is important because they refused to change out the poached eggs on the Pesto, Eggs & Fetta on Toast dish. As runny yolks are a risk for pregnant women, we asked if we could have scrambled or fried eggs instead, but they said they couldn't do any changes. The best they could offer was to cook the poached egg until the yolks were hard. But who wants a hardboiled poached egg??? She ordered the crab & prawn linguine instead because all the dishes with eggs on the lunch menu were poached eggs only.

The food came out a bit slowly, but was pretty decent, if unspectacular. I probably got luckiest with the grilled barramundi on wild rice with a curry sauce. That was delicious. The linguine was pretty meh, which didn't help and one of the other diners who did order the pesto eggs dish left most of the roast because it was too tough to cut easily with the bread knife provided.

To top of the experience, the venue refuses to split bills (there were 5 of us) despite having zero lines at the counter. Seems a pretty big oversight and an unnecessary inconvenience to diners.

All up, the place was fine, but it's in an awkward to get to part of London Cct at the moment while construction goes on and the dining experience was pretty average for the quality being offered. Wouldn't return, there are too many better options in Canberra to accept the poor...

Located on 7 London circuit in Acton, Roy Jr is a contemporary cafe that serves breakfast from 7:00 to 11:30, and lunch from 11:30 to 15.30 on weekdays, and to 14:00 on weekends.

The decor is fresh and modern with a retro vibe. There are a variety of seating available indoors and out, and the styles of tables suit dining solo, for two or four, all the way up to 10 and 12 at the round tables and more. The seating is very flexible.

The menu is modern Australian fusion - so you'll have classic items with an international flavour and texture twist.

Breakfast items include buttermilk waffles with a coconut Kaya sauce, mixed berries passionfruit, berry coulis with a white chocolate, macadamia crumb; there's chilli scrambled eggs with cashew cream and sourdough;

Lunch items include some breakfast items as well as classic dishes such as beef burgers, prawn and crab linguine, soba bowl - soba noodles with soy glazed Tempe, purple cabbage, Bok Choy, edamame, avocado, red capsicum, pickled ginger, red redish and wonton Crips with a soy and yuzukosho dressing

There are also sweets at the counter.

The drinks menu has a good selection of smoothies, freshly squeezed juices, hot drinks and wine. There are a couple of cocktails also.

There is a 10% weekend and 15% public holiday surcharge.

A sort stroll from the Australian National University, Civic and New Acton, Roy Jr is worth a drop in to relax and enjoy...