Leeroy’s café taps into the past by serving guilty pleasures from the owners' childhoods – sweet cereal and fat cheese toasties.

The light-filled Leeroy’s is located on the lip of Iparrityi Whitmore Square and seats six people inside and up to 10 on milk crates out front.

The café had its first day of trade last Thursday, unveiling a menu with five different toasties, each filled with tantalising meats, such as salami, chicken “schnit” and triple-smoked ham.

Coffee comes from local roaster D’Angelo Coffee, and beans are also for sale.

The crème de la crème of the operation, however, is in Leeroy’s range of imported US cereals, co-owner Emmanuel Tsacos tells CityMag.

His personal favourite are the Honey Maid S’mores.

“We just thought: what are our guilty pleasures? Cereal, for me, is one of them,” Emmanuel says.

“I just love a bowl of cereal, and you can’t really get American cereals anywhere else. And we just thought we’d give it a crack.”

Emmanuel and his partners, Bojan Gasic and George Rhigas, got the keys to the property on Boxing Day last year, with plans to open the café in February.

COVID-19 inevitably disrupted the flow of the city, so the team decided to hold off. Throughout this time, they worked on the fit out.

“We pretty much started with this old door, and thought we’d go with an old-school design mentality,” Emmanuel says.

“It was pretty much chuck a counter up, chuck a coffee machine in.”

The café is intended to mimic an Americana diner, with an emphasis on “getting back to basics”.

The shop’s construction was completed in-house, including a long wrap-around timber bench under a large window looking out onto the street.

Despite the new lick of paint and the large coffee machine, the property retains some remnants of its previous life.

“So my partner George, this was his great-grandfather’s barbershop,” Emmanuel explains.

“He was cutting hair for 50 odd years and since he retired, it’s just been sitting empty.

“They’re the original mirrors.”

Leeroy’s cereal and cheese toastie offerings will evolve regularly, Emmanuel says. But for now, the plan is to “see how it goes”.

Photos of Emmanuel, George and Bojan as kids, and, in the middle, as adults about to embark on their new business – Leeroy’s