Cornersmith - Preserving The Future
Words by Sonya Gellert
Photography by Jess Kearney
When partners in life, business and parenthood, Alex Elliot-Howery and James Grant opened the doors to their neighbourhood cafe Cornersmith in Sydney’s Inner West in 2011, their modest aspiration was to get customers thinking about eating with the seasons and consuming more responsibly. The hardworking duo never dreamt that seven years on they’d be at the helm of a second cafe, The Picklery school, two cookbooks and one tight-knit community.
Where did Cornersmith begin for you?
Alex: We’d never started a business before. James had been working in the coffee industry, and was ready to stop working for other people. We had two little kids and I was obsessively cooking at home – tinkering with pickling and preserving. And, I was trying to solve the massive issues in the food industry. So we put our heads together, and were fantasising about having our own place – the kind of coffee shop that you want in your neighbourhood where everything is good: good coffee, good vibes, good food, good ethics.
How has Cornersmith evolved over the years?
James: I think what you’re doing becomes clearer almost as you do it. You open a shop and you think, ‘we know we value these things, and we need it to be good quality. And, we want to highlight makers, producers and growers.’ Alex: It’s kind of like having a baby. You just focus on each stage as it happens. It’s also been really, really hard work. And the reason it’s still going so well is that we still love what we do. We’re very driven by our ethos. I feel like if you didn’t have that drive, you wouldn’t stay in hospitality. I think it’s the education that took me by surprise. We opened the cooking school, The Picklery, just to see if people were interested. James: The Picklery started and then we quickly realised it needed its own space. Here in Marrickville there was a large Greek community in the 1950s, and the Vietnamese community emerging in the 1980s. And now young people are moving in to find these established fruit trees – and they don’t have the time or the know-how to use the fruit. So we said, ‘Hey, bring it in and we’ll trade. If you’re not going to use it, we’ll trade you for something else.’ It’s a handshake agreement – it could be coffee or a breakfast or a jar of something. Alex: But then people were bringing in so many grapefruits, and I was thinking, ‘I don’t want any more grapefruits, so I’m going to teach you how to deal with your own grapefruits.’ James: From then on, every dish on the menu featured an element of what we’d been pickling or fermenting. Alex: Those traditional preserving skills form a big part of what we do. Then there were the books. Two publishers called me and I said, ‘What? Are you sure?’ Then they wanted another one, and again I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ People feel really strongly about our first book, and come up to me to say, ‘That’s made me rethink how I feed my family at home and what I do with my garden produce’. It’s an amazing feeling.
What’s the biggest things you’ve learnt along the way?
James: Seven years in, I’m learning about endurance. It’s about staying true about what you set out to do – regardless of trends. You’ve got to constantly tap into those initial core ideals, and constantly recheck yourself. Alex: I also think being married and working together has been a learning curve. I reckon we do it well now. We didn’t in the beginning. James would tell me to clean down table 5 and I’d say ‘you fucking clean down table 5.’ James: At first I was like, ‘Hey babe, can you wipe down table 5?’ And then it get’s a bit busier and you drop the ‘babe’ and just say ‘table 5’. We’re too busy for ‘babe’. It was a ‘who’s the boss’ struggle. Alex: It’s been huge, but now we look after different things and that has allowed us to grow. James: I’m about the details and Alex is about the big ideas. We’re always working at it.
How would you describe your approach to food?
Alex: For me, our menus represent how we eat at home and what I think the future of food needs to look like. Seasonal eating is really important. I want people to be able to come in here and see the seasons changing. We’re dictated by what’s going on in nature. James: The seasonality thing might seem like bit of a buzzword, but it’s important for many reasons. Alex: Exactly, the produce is better, it’s cheaper, you’re supporting small producers and farmers, you’re eating food that’s from your environment, there are no food miles and you’re reducing waste. I also believe we need to eat less meat. Our Annandale café is vegetarian and, in our Marrickville shop, we started putting ethically raised meat on the menu before people really started talking about that stuff. We don’t just eat bacon without thinking about where it’s from. James: And it may be expensive, but it needs to be. If you don’t want to spend $6 on a side of ham, don’t have the ham. I’m not going to make it a $3 side. Alex: That’s right, putting value on food is important. We’re constantly trying to come up with ways to use our kitchen waste. Nothing goes in the bin. Everything has a life and then another life. It’s so our kitchens don’t create waste, but also so our customers can go, ‘you can eat beetroot stems. I had no idea.’ I don’t want to ram our philosophy down anyone’s throat. I’m hoping we just get people thinking a little bit. It’s good, simple, tasty food. Thoughtful food.
What do you love most about running Cornersmith?
Alex: I still feel really excited about it and I think that’s because we haven’t finished telling the story yet. James: If you were just doing the same thing everyday for seven years, you’d burn out. But I think because this is always evolving and we tap into big ideas and the community, it never feels old. Alex: It now feels pretty amazing to have built something that is a community in itself. We still love it.
What do you find are the biggest challenges?
James: I think the biggest challenge is to uphold our standards of where we want to be. Alex: That’s hard because our standards are so high. I think finances are a massive challenge too. Hospitality – if we’re really going to talk about it – is not rewarding, financially. But we’re not in it to make a motza; we’re in it to have really satisfying work.
What’s in the future for Cornersmith?
Alex: At this point in our lives, three shops and two kids feels like more than enough. But, I still feel like there are big issues to battle and conversations to have. We are about to launch online classes for people outside of Sydney, which you’ll see on our website. Stay tuned. Cornersmith isn’t going anywhere.
Cornersmith
Sydney, Australia
cornersmith.com.au
Picklery: 441 Illawarra Road
Annandale: 88 View Street
Marrickville: 314 Illawarra Road
