All you need is love: Lovers Deli & Canteen opens in White Gum Valley

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley
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What do you get when you mix a couple of hospo guns with years of pumping breakfast service under their belts and their own coffee roastery, with a former newsagents-turned-neighbourhood-Vietnamese on a busy White Gum Valley street?

When it comes to Mia Gammon and Jake Carter – co-owners of Mosman Park and Fremantle cafés Good Things, plus Jake’s coffee roasting outfit Double Double – their experience has alchemised into Lovers Deli & Canteen, a café channelling diner-style nostalgia, neighbourhood warmth and a sharp eye for design.

Ahead of the opening, we stopped by Lovers for a chat to the pair, plus head chef Shauna Shapiro, to get the scoop on what to expect.

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley

“We started Good Things about 10 years ago in Mossie, then Freo opened almost three years ago,” Mia tells us. We’re gathered around a table in the front courtyard of the café, shielded from the passing traffic by a brand new timber fence that encloses the space. At the rear, a mini basketball court dominates another enclosed, very kid-friendly courtyard.

“The Freo one’s really taken off, which is great,” adds Jake. “We’ve been doing the same kind of thing for almost 10 years, and we wanted to branch out a little bit with the new concept – a new look and feel, new brand altogether.”

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley

“I feel like Good Things is such a place now that you can’t really change much,” continues Mia. “If I try to change that menu, people see me out and they’re like, ‘Why’d you take that off the menu?!’”

Locals to the area, they were drawn to the venue’s prime position along South Street.

“When we found the lease I thought it was the perfect spot for what I was looking for – that neighbourhood, community vibe. There’s a big block of land – that ability to have a back courtyard, a front courtyard. And it’s very central in the sense of it being on a main road.”

“It seems over the last four months of having this space, everyone – no matter what age they are – they have a story about it. Older people: ‘I used to go there and get milk back in the day when it was a newsagents’, and then some 25 year old said to me the other day ‘I used to buy single cigarettes before school.’ Everyone’s got a little story!”

“I always thought that this area was lacking. I’ve lived in Freo forever, I think that living in the neighbourhood, and other people living in the neighbourhood are always like, ‘There’s nothing around here, you’ve got to go into Fremantle.’”

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley
Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley

While we like to think we can see past shiny branding and trendy aesthetics, we can admit we were rather taken by Lovers’ visual identity – even before we knew any other details.

“The space just really had that lunch bar feel to it already,” says Jake. “So I think we just riffed off of that. We wanted to make it a combination of being modern but also feeling nostalgic.”

“The branding and the fit out, and the menu, it all ties into that: it’s a modern take on classics that bring people comfort and joy.”

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley

“In my mind it’s like a bit of a throwback to original hospitality, where it was really warm and heartfelt and honest – we just wanted to reinvigorate that a little bit and make people feel at home.”

“The menu should keep adapting as we grow. The head chef, Shauna, is really passionate about food and has great ideas, so it’ll just keep transforming. But keeping that same focus on simplicity and highlighting local produce and getting the best kind of produce we can, and really highlighting on each dish that item.”

“I think the motto is simple food done well, using really good ingredients.” Shauna adds.

“So the dishes themselves have complexity to them, behind the sauces, behind the components of the dish – but on the plate it’s not too many components.”

Like with the fit-out, there’s a definite North American, diner inspiration at play – although offset by a nostalgia that will be more familiar to Australian and New Zealander visitors. Think chicken schnitzel topped with capers and butter-toasted buckwheat, leafy green salads, salmon and cream cheese waiting to be spread on rye and topped with pickled onions – not to mention old-school cabinet sweets like finger buns and lamingtons.

(While the kitchen will close at 2, Mia confirms after school coffee and snacks will still be on offer until 4. “Lots of cafés shut at 2 or 3, there’s not really anywhere to go so we’ll try to tap into that market.”)

Lovers Deli & Canteen, White Gum Valley

“Little bits of nostalgia to me and where I grew up, back home in Toronto,” continues Shauna. “As an example, the tuna mayo: that’s something you’d see at a bagel shop back home, and that’s something that maybe I miss a little bit. Also things that Mia and Jake find nostalgic, like the crepes for an example.”

Also the brains behind pop up Polly’s Bagels, Shauna has spent time in the kitchen at Good Things – but prior to that, the chef’s impressive CV included stints at Momofuku’s Toronto and New York outposts.

“I think something that was also really important to me as a chef, was really trying to do something that’s different to everyone else.”

“Every café does eggs, sure – and we’ll have egg dishes, that’s gonna be on the menu!” she emphasises.

So while they’ll be doing a version of a sausage and egg muffin, it will be their own distinct Lovers version, made with parsley sauce, pickled onions and blood pudding. 

“At first I was like, I don’t know about that! And then I tried it…” laughs Mia.

“Yeah, I’ve convinced everyone!” says Shauna. “And as someone who’s Canadian – and I actually wasn’t really raised on that and didn’t really have it very much.”

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“But I want people to look at the menu and be like, ‘That’s different’, ‘I haven’t had that before’, ‘I haven’t seen that’, or ‘That’s cool.’ I didn’t want to be just a cut and paste in a different version of another café, or another restaurant, or another something.”

“I think that’s what we want to try and achieve,” adds Mia. “That memorable taste that you leave, and then you wake up and you’re like, ‘I want that!’”

“Memorable nostalgia, yeah!” agrees Shauna. “Comfort, homey, all those kind of feelings.”

Lovers Deli & Canteen is scheduled to open officially on Monday, December 9 and is located at 228 South Street, White Gum Valley.

All images: Sally Hall / Perth is OK!

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