Acacia Henley Beach Director and Co-owner Elisa Mercurio has used her café’s beachside backdrop to merge her love of sophisticated city dwellings with a relaxed beach vibe.
She opened the venue on Boxing Day 2017, and it has become the local hangout for customers to enjoy high quality coffee, food, wine, and service.
“We want our customers to have an all around sensory experience,” Elisa says. “We were certainly concerned about the interior design aesthetics. However, we’ve used a combination of subtle textures and materials to create a refined, welcoming space centred around the Modbar.”
Elisa says the machine itself creates a completely different environment, eliminating the barrier between the baristas and the customer. “It also lends its hand to a nice steady workflow,” Elisa says.
Acacia Henley Beach features a range of rotating single origins. At time of print, it was serving an Ethiopian and Colombian from Normcore, and a Ninety Plus Coffee Gesha Esmeralda. Its May house blend roasted by Ona Coffee, contains 70 per cent Brazilian beans with 15 per cent Indonesian, and 15 per cent Indian.
“This blend has chocolate, vanilla, malty and sweet caramel notes,” Elisa says. “We like to try new flavours and spark conversations with our customers.”
On the food menu, Acacia seamlessly transforms from morning breakfast to shared dinner plates.
“Our menu has a lot of inspirations in South American flavour and Mediterranean flavours as well,” she says. “We are always finding new innovative ways to exaggerate flavours and refined presentation.”
Breakfast favourite includes patatas bravas, served in a hot pot with black beans, chorizo, homemade tomato sauce, potatoes, a poached egg and chilli salsa.For dinner, try the ceviche with sliced fresh fish, sunomono cucumber, chilli, onions, caviar and lime dressing; or rare beef eye fillet with chilli chocolate chutney, poached sweet onion, parsnip discs, and grilled chilli.
Elisa says opening her own café venue has been extremely rewarding, and it’s only just the beginning.
“I enjoy having a goal or an idea in mind of what you want to achieve, then building it from the ground up and working with extremely talented professionals to bring it to life,” she says. “Its followed by the level of enthusiasm our staff have within their selected field and the knowledge they have inspires us daily.”
Elisa says the icing on top is seeing her customers enjoying their collaborative efforts and all aspects of what they offer: “It is very rewarding.”
Acacia Henley Beach
Shop 3 – 269 Seaview Rd,
Henley Beach, South Australia, 5022
Open Sunday to Thursday 7am to 4pm, Friday and Saturday 7am to late
(08) 8221 6502
