Now Open: Any Given Sunday Brings Coffee and Community to an Unloved Corner Shop in Adelaide’s West

Despite being sandwiched between a recently revived Port Adelaide and the ever-trendy Croydon, Cheltenham has been long underserved when it comes to quality cafes. So it’s easy to understand why there’s a palpable buzz around the arrival of Any Given Sunday – a corner store turned cafe serving well-made coffee and pastries.

In the midst of a hectic first week of service, co-owner Alex Perisic swirls her short black and speaks with both exhaustion and excitement about seeing a long-held dream come to life, and be embraced by the local community.

“The customers so far have mainly been locals … everyone’s been super friendly. Even through the whole renovation process, people driving past would slow down and ask us what we were up to. We just can’t get over how many nice people there are in the neighbourhood and the sense of community,” Alex tells Broadsheet.

“I used to run Gallery Rooftop bar and city drinkers have such a different vibe. I’m still waiting for someone to yell at me here,” she laughs.

While Alex and partner-slash-co-owner Alice were preoccupied working at Gallery, they both had the same idea gestating: to open a cafe for people like them (young couples with dogs or children) that served good coffee and pastries but still felt inviting and homey.

“We had been looking for a corner store for about two years … we were so site-specific, we really wanted the whole charm of it being an old shop,” Alex says. After years of searching, they found the one by chance – when a family friend purchased the house next door and told Alex’s dad. “It was everything that we’d been looking for; we could barely believe our luck.”

After six months of development, Any Given Sunday has been born. They redesigned the space with a focus on simplicity and comfort. The refurb was done by the couple themselves with help from family and friends. Outside, there’s a white wall emblazoned with the cafe’s name in oversized retro typography; while inside, in the same style, you are thanked for your patronage. There’s seating inside or al fresco, with lead hooks for dogs to safely wait while their owners re-caffeinate.

Local producers are predominantly featured on the concise menu. White Horse Coffee supplies the beans of choice, alongside pastries and pies from Skala Bakery as well as some classic Nippy’s flavoured milk. On weekends, the team will be serving gibanica (“gibbo for short”, Alex jokes) – a traditional Serbian pastry made by Alex’s mother with a secret family recipe. The glistening, buttery filo with cheese filling is already popular.

In keeping with the site’s former life as a corner store, one of the walls of the space is adorned with essential supplies like eggs, cereal and various milks available to purchase (no overpriced chilli oil though, Perisic stresses with a smile).

The Perisics are already talking future additions to the menu and have been tinkering with sandwiches. Alex mentions a cheese kransky spin on the classic Reuben – and if that’s not enough to get mouths watering we don’t know what is.

Any Given Sunday
32 Stroud St South, Cheltenham

Hours:
Daily 7am–2pm

@anygivensundaycoffee