Scout's Honour

It’s all thanks to a tin mug of soup at this cute new Redfern café. The little enamel cups are each illustrated with a different outdoorsy skill. We learn to make a tepee, certainly, but maybe you might learn to tie a reef knot and have a Moonrise Kingdom moment. Inside the mug, in case you’re wondering, is a rustic potato and leek number interspersed with extra crisp leek tendrils and crunchy little bacon bits served with a big hunk of Sonoma miche on the side.

Share a sandwich if that doesn’t seem like enough of a lunch (it is, though). We go for the tender shreds of slow cooked beef brisket on more of that malty brown miche, red cabbage, chunky slices of pickle, salsa verde, and mayonnaise. It’s more than a mouthful – it’s dinner between two pieces of bread.

Scout’s Honour is built inside an old fruit shop, using most of the space for the island kitchen. Everything else kind of just exists around it. Seats are at a premium here – there’s a communal table up the back packed with punters, bar seating near the soup pot (packed with us) or standing room on the footpath. There’s a little mat out the front for a sleeping black fluffy dog, which might not help you, but it might help cute-ify your Instagram feed. In fact, space is at such a premium here, Woodyard moved in upstairs so she wouldn’t have so far to roll every morning.

It really is a pretty little room - all white tiles, plant cuttings in vases, bowls of fruit (every person gets a mandarin with their lunch) and a work bench overflowing with cakes (today it’s a classic vanilla butter cake with milk chocolate icing) and muffins. There are milk shakes (salt caramel, vanilla malt) if it’s not a coffee day for you, though it might be worth persevering with the caffeine. They do good work across the board, from three-quarter flat whites to a quick-fire ristretto. All this, and a soundtrack of Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliot and Color Me Badd - what more could you want out of lunch?

It’s a sign of the times when this stretch of George Street boasts a GoGet car share pod, a new bike lane and this ace little café. But whichever side of the gentrification fence you sit on, it’s a fun time here.