Sydney's cafe scene has always made the rest of us feel a little inadequate. But right now three specific things are taking over the city's breakfast and brunch tables, and you should know about them before your next trip.

The Sydney Morning Herald says the big three right now are pancakes (not the sad floppy kind), cold foams, and pandan. I'll run through each one because they tell you something different about where that city's food scene is right now.

First, the pancakes. We're not talking about diner flaps soaked in fake maple. Sydney's doing the thick, pillowy, almost-souffle situation that stacks tall and probably has something unexpected layered in or drizzled on top. The kind of pancake that requires a fork and a moment of silence before you cut into it. These have been creeping through cafe menus in other cities too but Sydney's adopted them as a full identity.

Then there's cold foam, which started as a coffee-shop novelty and has become a legit category. If you haven't had one, it's a chilled, lightly whipped milk or cream foam that sits on top of an iced drink and slowly melts into it as you sip. It sounds simple because it is. But the texture difference between a cold foam topped drink and a regular iced latte is big enough that once you try it, going back feels like a downgrade.

And pandan. This is the one I care about most. Pandan is a tropical leaf used across Southeast Asian cooking, and its extract gives baked goods and desserts this incredible green color and a flavor that's kind of nutty, kind of floral, kind of like vanilla's more interesting cousin. It's been a staple in Malaysian, Thai, and Indonesian kitchens forever. Seeing it show up in mainstream Sydney cafes means the city's Asian Australian food culture is getting the spotlight it should have had a long time ago. Marco would have a field day with this one.

What I love about this particular set of trends is that they're genuinely worth traveling for. I've planned entire mornings around a single cafe in cities where the breakfast culture hits different, and Sydney is absolutely that kind of city. You take a ferry across the harbor, walk to some neighborhood you've never heard of, and end up eating a pandan coconut pancake stack that ruins every pancake you'll eat for the next year.

If you're heading to Sydney soon, or even thinking about it, build at least one morning around chasing these down. The pancakes won't be hard to find. The cold foam will find you. But the pandan pastries at the right bakery, those you might have to work for a little. That's the fun part.