This bright and breezy spot in Sydney’s north-west ’burbs puts a Mediterranean spin on cafe classics

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June, a new cafe in Sydney’s north-west, verges on the idyllic. Everywhere you look, inside the sunny interior with walls dotted with framed art and shelves bearing fresh flowers, or outside under shady umbrellas on a vast outdoor forecourt, customers linger in the sun.

Even down beside the native plant-edged parking bays below a homemade street library box, they’re chatting cheerfully in quiet, tree-edged residential streets filled with birdsong.

It’s like a computer animation of a forthcoming commercial development except it’s real. People rock prams, hold walking sticks, smooth sharp suits or adjust fabulous sunglasses while chewing bronzed cultured butter Sonoma croissants, or kale fattoush salad with lemon pomegranate dressing.

They sit drinking Single O flat whites, slurping berry smoothies or eating pancakes topped with Persian fairy floss, while beaming about their jammy luck having this place down the road.

June’s owner Hannah Kassis, who transformed the site from a mini supermarket with blocked-out windows and cavernous insides, had never run a cafe before. “I’ve worked in hospitality since I was 14,” she says. “I knew I was going to open a cafe but I did think it would be when I was much older.”

What struck her as she moved from leaseholder to cafe-creator was an ever increasing passion for the design details. Aged 22, with the help of family, friends and her builder dad, Kassis reworked the walls and windows, built a new kitchen and oversaw the design. She turned Bunnings plant pots into suspended light-shades, used her graphic design skills to create the cafe’s flower logo and turned two side windows into pull-up awnings, providing an open-air coffee hangout.

“When I was opening lots of people would say, ‘Are you a chef?’ or ‘Are you a barista?’” she says. “But, what I’ve loved has been creating an experience for people, more than anything.

“It’s every aspect. The design, the space, the acoustics, the font on the menu, the wording of things.”

June’s menu is divided into breakfast and lunch with dishes ranging from granola, acai bowls, vege omelettes and spicy shakshuka baked eggs with chorizo and feta cheese. There’s burgers, wraps, Greek, fattoush and chicken salads and barramundi on a kale, pear and cabbage coleslaw.

“My dad is from Syria and our chef is Lebanese so the food’s got a bit of a Mediterranean feel to it,” Kassis says. “Our goal, being a local spot, is to be accessible, easy, fresh, simple food.”

A high point is the miso salmon bowl. A fat slab of crispy-skinned pan-fried fish on top of brown rice mixed with corn, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, kale, Spanish onion, roasted almonds and a sweet kicky miso sauce is excellent.

Equally fine are the pancakes – soft, luscious and sweetly wigged with cloudlike puffs of pink Persian fairy floss. Also delicious is the benny bagel, which oozes yolk over layers of smoked salmon flecked with sesame seeds. The bagels are perfectly chewy.

There’s a separate kids’ menu, gluten-free offerings and, if you’re wearing a tool-belt, a weekday tradie special offering a bacon and egg roll and coffee.

Parking abounds and anyone requiring space for off-road wheeled devices could do doughnuts on the forecourt.

June, which is partly named after the month most of the cafe’s renovations occurred, also features the sort of bathroom always hoped for when searching for amenities. Freshly fitted out with Mediterranean blue hues and fancy soap and hand lotion, it’s also accessible.

Winston Hills residents may demure at everyone knowing about their cafe, but June’s size and community-minded approach means it will cope.

As it is, mornings are chokka-block with commuters and the regular arrival of up to eight paramedic trucks each day seeking caffeine. Today, a special Father’s Day barbecue is being held with Kassis’s dad wielding the tongs.

She has plans to continue her cafe creation skills onto other locations one day. “The end goal is to be towards the ocean,” she says. “But, at the moment, I’m pretty lucky to be here.”