I think the Chrome behaviour (display invisible content for a while, then after a timeout render using fallback fonts) would be a happy compromise were the time

I think the Chrome behaviour (display invisible content for a while, then after a timeout render using fallback fonts) would be a happy compromise were the timeout not three whole seconds. font-display: optional and font-display: fallback (as linked in the article) look like promising solutions to the problem (both recommend a FOIC aka 'block period' of 100ms), but it'd be even nicer to set the exact duration of the block and swap periods in CSS.