The cheeky end of Paddington

Every morning, Apache Salute on Boundary Street is full of groups catching up over coffee. Tommy’s been making coffee in this corner of Sydney for the best part of three decades.

Tommy was 20, fresh out of a graphic design course, when he started at the cafe that became Latteria on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. As a studio junior he'd have been "probably earning 100 bucks a week", he says. Doing coffees paid "probably five times that amount".

The Victoria Street vibe of the late 90s kept him hooked. Hospitality workers from the Cross were "a massive part of our afternoon trade", so the cafe stayed open until 8pm. These days most cafes close at 2pm, he says, (“and people whinge about the fact that you can't get a coffee after 2pm.” But a late coffee and a chat with a couple of people just isn’t profitable.)

The cafe was "part of that whole community supporting that kind of industry," he says, "and they supported us greatly."

After 18 or so years, with the lockout laws biting and the strip changing fast, he left. "I'm not saying I could foresee what was happening, but I thought it was time to exit."

Boundary Street was an unlikely next stop. Back then, he says, "the high street was the place to be" and Boundary Street "was just not an option at all." But he lived down the road and kept walking past the shopfront thinking, "This has a lot of potential."

What he built is a coffee bar where nobody has a ticket. "It's not about being a generic number and you get called out, 'Number 56, your coffee's ready.' No, it's like, 'Hey Nico, how are you? Your large coffee with one sugar?'"

Chat to the person next to you while you wait, grab a spare seat at a table on the footpath, he says, and "you see them again next week and say, g'day again. And then probably the next time you'll sit down with that person." Sooner or later, "there'd be some kind of connection. You might need something from that person or vice versa."

Tommy knows this part of Paddington gets overlooked. He doesn't mind. "I prefer that bit of... cheekiness that Boundary Street brings."

That cheek is on his wall too, in a mural he painted himself. As a kid, he was "that cheeky bugger" who wrote on walls. He wanted it against "the clean, fresh marble", for the contrast. “...I’ve got to be careful what I put on there.”

He likes the old warehouses nearby too, a reminder this was once an industrial strip. "I love going down there and feeling like you still got factories around, even though they're not factories anymore."

Give him an unlimited budget and he'd fix the footpaths and "tidy up the neighbourhood". His wish list is modest. "A little tidy up. A little plant, a little something, a little light."

He tries to keep the morning chat short, so there's enough to go around. "I give everyone that much love and then people are pretty grateful for that." For some regulars, the connection is the whole point: "A lot of people walk away, go, 'Well, that's the best part of my day done. Now I've got to get on with it.'" Then there are the renters, who "become part of the family for a good 6 months, 12 months" before moving on.

(with thanks to Tommy)

Apache Salute, 110B Boundary Street, Paddington. Open from 6:30am weekdays and Saturday mornings, closed Sundays.

Ed's note: Know a local you think I should interview? Let me know: [email protected]