The ‘Food, Coffee, Banter’ mantra scrawled across the awning of Seddon cafe Fig & Walnut, is a slice of inner-west iconography. Gaze at the façade and you’ll catch the ghostly echoes of ‘BEE’ and ‘HIVE,’ vestiges of Burton’s Beehive Store, built in 1912.
Run by Mr. E Burton and his notoriously absent-minded wife, this place was more than a store; it was a local legend. Mrs. Burton, perpetually losing her handbags, was a character straight out of a screwball comedy, her misadventures plastered across the papers in desperate ads: ‘MAN, known, who purchased chocolates, cigarettes, and Herald at Mrs Burton’s Bee-hive Store, Seddon, with £l note received £l0 note in change. Reward of £l for information leading to detection.’ Another warned the customer to return the money ‘to save further trouble.’ I can imagine standing there, wondering whether I should pay for my goods or make a quick exit while Mrs. Burton, the matriarch of misplacement, frantically searches for something – anything – she hasn’t yet lost. It was a madhouse!
Fig & Walnut isn’t just brewing coffee; it’s dishing out servings of history, all under the watchful gaze of a train station that’s seen more action than a back-alley dice game. In a corner, the ghost of Mrs. Burton might be seen, dispensing ten-pound notes like a slot machine gone haywire, a spectral testament to the virtues of financial amnesia. Next time you step in for a cuppa, raise a toast to Fig & Walnut, not just a café, but a living, breathing piece of the inner-west’s soul, a place where the banter is as rich as the coffee and the walls whisper secrets of times gone by.
