Many shops will tell you that their customers are like family but few show it better than Jamaica Street Snack Shop. Small and perhaps unassuming to passersby, the Baltic Triangle café has been serving up some of the best priced lunch in the city for over 16 years and and it’s not just through food that the area is serving its community.
Quietly becoming cornerstone of the area, the small white painted café has been run by husband and wife Lisa and Terry Lau since 2009 and in that time Terry not only served the area’s many residents workers and local artists, but has documented them too.
Behind a counter of crisps and chocolate bars cardboard boxes are filled with hundreds of caricature-style portraits of customers, each lovingly illustrated by Terry. Alongside many portraits is a favourite sandwich, sketched and remembered.
Terry, 63, who worked as architect for 25 years before opening the shop, has captured everyone from local headteachers, business owners, artists from nearby studios and familiar lunchtime regulars have all been the subject of his drawings. One even features actor James Nelson-Joyce, who Terry met when he was filming nearby.
Lisa, 53 said: “We’re probably the only business that has a connection to everyone in the Baltic”.
Terry and James Nelson Joyce alongside Terry’s sketches are displayed in the shop (Image: Liverpool ECHO )
The connection between Terry and Lisa and their customers isn’t hard to see and the shop hums with breakfast and lunchtimes punters, bringing a steady stream first name greetings and regular orders. Between its convivial buzz and solid lunchtime staples the atmosphere of the shop is that of the Baltic Triangle’s very own tuckshop and it’s no wonder that some customers have returned for over a decade.
The shop has the atmosphere of somewhere little changed despite the area’s transformation and prices are refreshingly old-school with paninis and baguettes for £3.20 and slices of homemade tiffin for £1.90. Every sandwich is made fresh to order, with bread and baked goods supplied by Morris Bakery. The menu is simple but flexible, with Lisa tailoring each sandwich to the customer.
Lisa said: “Everyone’s bread, meat, salads – we know how they like it. The funny thing is that people will order the same sandwich for 16 years.”
Between serving sandwiches, Terry has also spent his free time writing about the area too. Having witnessed the area has evolve from an empty industrial land to a thriving creative district Terry is now immortalising his decade and a half in the triangle through the eyes of the snack shop.
“Simon and his favourite sandwich”. Terry’s sketch of a member of Liverpool indie band, Married to the Sea(Image: Terry Lau)
“We’ve been here over 16 years and so I wanted to write about the area,” Terry explains. When the couple, who live in Aigburth first arrived, the Baltic Triangle looked very different. Terry said: “There was nothing here, it was empty warehouses, no shops, no cafés.”
Sharing draft sections of his work, which he hopes to one day turn into a book, Terry describes changes including how the skate park opposite the shop “was once a wasteland” before seeing “week by week…dedicated skaters build their obstacles and tracks into what you see today”. In one segment, he lovingly describes how witnessing the changes has been “like watching a child grow up.”
Jamaica Street Snack Shop, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool(Image: Liverpool ECHO )
Keeping the old school spirit of the area alive through friendly hellos and favourite orders, while lovingly archiving the area’s new era, this is a true love letter to the Baltic Triangle.