A storm is brewing when I arrive at Thirty Three Cups.

The clouds hovering above Ulverstone, a small town on Tasmania’s north-west coast, are fat and malicious, the winds are whipping off Bass Strait and locals are scurrying to get their jobs ticked off before it all turns ugly.

So it’s really an ideal time to sidestep into this cosy café that boasts sublime coffee and a menu full of seasonal comfort food.

The place is classically mismatched and colourfully arranged. You can sit inside behind walls of glass and among displays of retro crockery or in an under-covered, well-heated area complete with nanna rugs for your knees.

I choose a teensy timber table in the interior’s corner with a view to a bookshelf, macramé hanging plants and the bustling pass.

If I crane my neck and excuse myself, I can see pots bubbling and chefs busying themselves chopping, stirring and having a giggle.

And that’s the approach of the whole place: fun and flirty but focused. Looking after me and two couples separated by a few decades is a bright and sincere waitress who is quick to offer her recommendations and deliver peppermint tea and bubbly water.

While I could have the whole menu, with its generous lashings of local produce, I need to consider a comfortable 75-minute drive back to Launceston. So it’s cashew cauliflower and sweet potato tikka marsala with home made yoghurt chapatti, plus pork belly with celeriac puree, sweet and sour red cabbage and apple relish.

The key to a good curry is balance and this tikka marsala is the perfect tightrope walker: creamy, textural and with lingering spice. The pork also boasts all sorts of textures, with crunchy cabbage, squishy pork and tender apple.

The sweets cabinet is testament to owner Sky Muir (pictured) and her exquisite pastry skills, which you can learn about at her cooking classes. In it are small portions of sugary treats you’ll always have room for.

I pick cake slathered in couverture chocolate, dotted with almonds, packed with fresh figs and all married with sticky meringue. Oh, and a salted caramel slab to go.

To compliment your selection is a drop of Ritual Coffee, the roasting house in Launceston that seems to stock every second café across Tasmania’s north. Cow, almond, soy, coconut – whatever your milk of choice, this café has it. The menu’s also very accommodating for the dietary-challenged.

I’m in no hurry to leave, and not just because fat raindrops are now falling furiously, but because Thirty Three Cups is a delightful, reliable destination in a part of Tasmania fast gaining pace, thanks to creative creatures like Sky and the rich offerings of its land and sea.

Go taste for yourself – just remember to pack your umbrella.