Get chewy bagels stuffed with cured salmon or salted beef, with a side of crisps and pickles. Or grab house-made egg dip and schmears to take home. And there’s a bagel delivery service coming soon.
Like many great things in life, Lox in a Box came about by accident. Candy Berger was hunting for sites in Sydney to open a sit-down deli and base her catering business, Fed Kitchen. But then a fateful brainstorming session hijacked her destiny.
“My wife Gaia Lovell said to me, ‘Won’t it be great when we have the deli, we can call the takeaway boxes Lox in a Box?’ [Cured and smoked salmon is typically called lox in the US.] I looked at her and said, ‘Oh my god, you’re a bloody genius, Lox in a Box, that’s unreal.”
The quip made her change tack and she decided to dump the deli in favour of a bagel-and-schmear [spread] delivery service. One week later, Berger drove past a cute ex-takeaway shop with stained-glass windows and a retro vibe at Bondi’s Seven Ways and thought it could work for the business, so she arranged a time to visit. She took a tour with Lovell (who helps her run the business), and for the second time she changed her mind.
“We looked at it and could visualise it not just as a catering kitchen, but also as a retail space for our bagels,” she says. “The shopfront was too beautiful to board [up]. The [layout] was made for our concept; we couldn’t not open a [takeaway] bagel shop. It would have been rude not to.”
It seems the customers – sitting on benches under the glorious paperbark trees in front of the shop, eating bagels stuffed with lox and hot salt-beef – would agree.
The deli window is open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only. That’s when punters can stop by to grab Jewish deli goods to take home – lox, schmears, egg mayo, pickles, chopped liver, Pepe Saya butter and more – as well as bagels made to order and babka (a yeast cake made from twisted dough, usually with chocolate or cinnamon).
Read the review by Sarah Norris in Broadsheet (Sydney).