The Abridged version:
- Founded in November 2024, Camp Cove is owner Jon Rubel’s ode to his childhood in Sydney.
- Australian cafés have become popular in other U.S. cities, but Camp Cove is the only one in the Sacramento region.
- Popular items include avocado toast, açaí bowls and flat white coffees.
Camp Cove has no giant Australian flag covering its white walls, no kangaroo mascot on its signage. The signs are subtler: a stack of regional cookbooks, framed photos of calming beaches, a jar of Vegemite unlisted on the menu but available upon request.
The Sacramento region’s only Australian café, Camp Cove eschews kitsch in hopes of being the type of café someone might actually visit Down Under. Opened by Sydney native Jon Rubel in November 2024 at 1401 O St., Suite B, it has accrued a loyal following of fellow Aussies along with Capitol staffers and nearby residents.
Signature items should feel familiar to Sacramento diners, albeit with some Australian differences. Scrambled eggs are folded into a soft swirl and served on sourdough toast, thick-cut bacon stands tall in breakfast sandwiches and açaí bowls are served as two sorbetlike scoops over fruit and granola without some of the frostiness that ensnares lesser berry blends.
There’s a light, easy ambiance to Camp Cove, in the food as much as the decor, staff banter and modern surf rock gently playing from speakers. A large front window lets natural light shine onto the light wood and plants in the 1,000-square foot space. It’s designed as a place where people feel comfortable walking with flip-flops and wet hair, be that from the South Pacific Ocean or American River.
“So much of it is a ‘feel’ thing. You kind of have to be here,” Rubel said. “It’s not one thing. It’s kind of a confluence of a variety of things that make the concept, with the cuisine itself being on the lighter side, very bright, very colorful.”
Rubel, 38, grew up regularly going to a protected Sydney beach called Camp Cove. He moved to New York City about 15 years ago for a career in finance, then followed his fiancée Rachel Cowan across the country for her surgery residency at the UC Davis Medical Center.
Rubel had long enjoyed cooking and hosting dinner parties, and he carried a fantasy of leaving the corporate grind behind one day to open a coffee shop. Australian cafés have become increasingly popular over the past decade – Eater called Melbourne “the world’s greatest breakfast city” in 2019 – and he found homes away from home in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But nothing in Sacramento, so he created his own.
“Being able to pay homage to growing up in Sydney and the café culture, that was something that was really important and I thought was a great export,” Rubel said. “It’s something that’s already a proven model in other, bigger cities. … So coming out here, it just seemed like an opportunity.”
Indeed, one won’t find house-baked Anzac biscuits – chewy cookies loaded with oats and coconut that originated during World War I – at other area cafés. Those biscuits pair with Los Angeles-based Amigo Coffee drinks, particularly flat whites, espresso drinks with a thin layer of foam that are ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand.
Immigration has shaped modern Australian food, as in the U.S., and Camp Cove’s lunch menu includes dishes such as chilled noodle salads or grilled halloumi over Italian farro as well as vegetarian sandwiches with whipped goat cheese, grilled zucchini and eggplant on focaccia. Rubel hadn’t met another Aussie since moving to Sacramento in 2023, but by staying true to his home nation’s café culture, he brought other Australian immigrants “out of the woodwork.”
“I wanted it to be a café that, in theory, could actually exist in Australia,” Rubel said. “At the end of the day, Australia’s a modern Western country. It’s not some revolutionary foreign concept.”
Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.