If you pass tiny sandwich deli Bertas after dusk, a shadowy figure in the open kitchen will likely be roasting whole fennel in a diminutive countertop oven, tossing candied walnuts in a pan or stirring grape or blackberry compote into the night.

This is Bertas owner, William Tooley, whose idea of turning a rundown inner west cafe into an espresso bar took some unexpected turns five months ago. The first was his partner falling through the venue’s rotting floorboards (she’s fine) mid-refurbishment. The second was Tooley realising the full-scale structural renovation required allowed a different and more exciting project than the one he’d planned – namely the sandwich deli of his dreams.

Pastrami sandwich.

Bertas, which opened in May, is a sandwich emporium standing on a new, structurally sound, speckled concrete floor. The menu offers six stout and fabulous sangers on Turkish bread, three hot-diggity breakfast rolls, and chocolate biscuits the size of dinner plates.

Tooley, whose hospitality CV includes corner cafe Noon in Manly, has gone gung-ho with creating his own sandwich ingredients – sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers and fennel, fruit compote spreads, garlic sauce, pesto, chimichurri and a range of roasted vegetables, most recently fennel and broccolini.

With cold cuts from LP’s Quality Meats and Whole Beast Butchery, and bread from Infinity Bakery, he’s pairing pickled onion, stracciatella and pistachio pesto in the mortadella sandwich, and layering generous amounts of pastrami between emmental cheese, pickled cucumber and sauerkraut.

Tooley on the tools.

There’s a special – rare roast beef with a lovely onion jam, more emmental, pickled onion and chimichurri – that Tooley is quite rightly adding to the menu permanently. All of these bready parcels allow the meat flavours to jangle with heat, tangy ferments and creamy cheeses on equal terms.

But for my money, the best sandwiches are based around the humble vegetable. Tooley’s passion for garden-grown ingredients is obvious in the “fennel two-ways”, its roasted and pickled aniseed flavours mingling with emmental, chilli mayonnaise and a lovely sweet grape compote.

Then there’s the burly roast broccolini option, doorstopper-sized and vegan. It comes with garlic sauce, a generous amount of muhammara (a Middle Eastern walnut and roasted red capsicum dip) and a mini forest thicket of broccolini stalks and florets on pickled cucumbers. Hubba hubba.

Fennel two-ways sandwich.

Tooley is also seeking perfection in a breakfast roll, offered here on a sourdough English muffin with egg and bacon, hash brown and egg or sausage and egg. In this morning’s queue, the sausage and egg is most popular. It’s almost pipped by orders for Bertas single hash brown – golden crunchy simplicity at the very reasonable price of $3.50, served on a plate with special sauce and “crack” salt.

You can eat at the dinky tables Tooley has decorated with broken white tiles left over from the updated cafe’s walls, and sip on a Bertas Blend coffee (a collaboration with Stanmore roaster Made of Many). But don’t sleep on the tahini latte, a drink Tooley created at Noon and made with molasses, cinnamon and espresso. It’s served hot or iced (you want hot).

Service at Bertas – an abbreviation of Roberta, a name Tooley loves – is fantastically cheery and prompt. There’s somehow plenty of seating in the small space, and it’s only an eight-minute stroll from the Sydenham Metro. Tooley is a man who appears indefatigable whatever the hour, and is always up for a chat about the splendour of sandwiches. If you’re passing, give him a wave tonight.

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