Cafe $ $$$ At It’s Recess, a new grab-and-go sandwich cafe, housed in the art deco Belgenny building, and six paces from Taylor Square’s rainbow crossing, the flavour of school tuck shops and packed lunch boxes is abundant. Neat containers of cut sandwiches, their pastrami, BLT, chicken avo, curried egg or ham, cheese and pickle fillings visible through see-through lids, line a tall, chilled cabinet on the left. Below, cheese, tuna melt and “pesto chook” toasties are wrapped in brown paper bags ready for the shop’s sandwich press.
On the front counter, beside a cabinet of almond, ham and cheese and plain croissants, is a jar of killer pythons. Each long, bendy, red, orange, yellow and green lolly snake is $1. To the left, a basket of chip varieties includes shiny golden packets of barbecue-flavoured Samboy chips (“The Flavour HITS You”).
On the back wall, above this small shop’s busy open kitchen, is a mural of hand-drawn, memory-sparking school-time illustrations. A chatterbox, a paper plane, a lunch box, a noughts and crosses game, a sun hat with a chin strap and a coin with “Lunch Money” written above it. Below this, co-owners Clark Wenborn and Paddy Levy, with fellow staff, are building, slicing, wrapping and ferrying just-made sandwiches and salads to the chilled cabinet and waiting customers.
The chicken avocado sandwiches run out, but Wenborn places a sign indicating more are under way. Lunchtime customers flood in, each studying the sandwiches, ord.
