From Yorkshire to Brunswick with Luke from Ten Tables
We decided to start our day in Brunswick at Ten Tables cafe on Albert Street & we were lucky enough to meet the new manager of the Cafe Luke who had a chat with us about Ten Tables and all things Brunswick.
Chris: First of all, please introduce yourself and tell us are you a Brunswick local?
Luke: My name is Luke Argall, I’m not a local at the moment, my wife is hopefully moving to the area. I’ve just taken over management of the cafe last week.
Chris: That’s great, what are your daily duties here at Ten Tables?
Luke: Well, opening for the day, setting up for the day, setting up the coffee machine, setting up our bakery our special boards and just generally making people happy.
Chris: What’s something special you can tell us about the business, what sort of differentiates this from other cafes?
Luke: Yeah, well we have only been open a year, end of April last year we opened. We’ve just gone through a change of management, our idea for the future and what we want to do is make this a community environment, really friendly cafe. We also want to start once/twice a month, evening events, ticketed events, talks, we definitely vegan-friendly so we would like to do some vegan nights, getting people down, especially from the Brunswick area.
Byron: You mentioned planning to move to Brunswick, what do you love about the area?
Luke: Yes, I am currently living in Preston/Reservoir area and I ride to work every day. It’s a developing area, I know there are developments going up but it’s currently in that nice little area where it hasn’t completely exploded yet. I like that we’re starting to boil a little bit, but not completely.
Byron: I notice an accent where are you from originally?
Luke: I grew up in Yorkshire in England, my Dad is Australian so I have been coming here and back since I was a kid. My wife is American, so I lived over there for a while then we came back & we’ve just had a little baby last year.
Byron: Congratulations!
Chris: I’ve got to know about the origins of the cafe name Ten Tables, I’m trying to count the tables and there seems to be about ten.
Luke: Haha, yes well we started off as eight, I think we are currently at eleven counting the bench. It was the owner, the benches are all made out of a bit of wood, it goes something along the lines of he asked a guy how many tables he would get out of the piece of weed and the guy said about ten tables and it just sort of struck a lightbulb, it’s a nice little catchy name.
Byron: I’ve got to ask do you have a favourite thing on the menu, what do you recommend?
Luke: So we are a seasonal menu, we change quite regularly but for me at the moment, the summer noodle salad is an absolute winner, winner. It’s really, really good, tasty filling but light.
Chris: Do you have any other favourite places to go and eat around here.
Luke: Since taking over management I have been going to a lot more cafes, I am actually a big supporter of Handsome Her down on Sydney road. I really like what they are doing, the message they are sending out to people and their sustainability as well, they don’t do takeaway cups and things like that, we definitely want to incorporate those ideas into here as well.
(Image credit: Instagram @tentablesmelbs)
Byron: Thank you Luke, we really appreciate you having a chat with us, best of like with your new management position and we hope to see you again soon.
Ten Tables is located at 8/50 Albert Street, not only do they have an exciting season menu and great coffee manager Luke seems to have some great ideas in the pipeline, we are definitely excited to see them happen and wish him the best in his new role.