The team behind panini shop Aye Frank are bringing its little brother to Flinders Park, corner deli style with coffee, panini and pinball on the cards.
Frankie Dicerto opened Aye Frank in June last year with three simple ingredients: coffee, panini, recording.
Aye Frank built a reputation as a place to create and eat, with an on-site studio available to hire used by rappers (including Frankie, who goes by Frankie D), podcasters, and even a uni lecturer that needed some high-quality sound.
Expanding wasn’t always the plan, but when a Holbrooks Road store popped up, Frankie says the time was right and with business partner George Magnisalis, they jumped in.
But much like how the recording studio sets Aye Frank apart, he knew a new space had to be more than just another sandwich shop.
“I want the focus to be like old school milk bar, the typical Australian milk bar, you know, go and get a milkshake,” Frankie says.
“I want a Streets ice cream freezer in there for summer, you can grab a Maxibon, Paddle Pop.
“You can still get these sandwiches, and you can get a gourmet hot dog as well, but just, you know, just a bit more grab and go, good quality grab and go.
“I think it goes without saying that it being a byproduct of this,” Frankie gestures to Aye Frank’s shopfront, “that there will be yummy Panini”.
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“But the main consensus being that it does yummy coffee, grab and go, you can grab this, you can grab that, you can grab the paper, you can grab the Tweedvale Milk if you want. Just a corner store, really.”
This picture: via Instagram
The new space is smaller than Aye Frank, and a short walk from Flinders Park Primary School and Nazareth College.
“We’re really playing into the Frank Junior because, like, in a high school area after school, grab a milkshake, play pinball, there’s rumours of a pinball machine coming as well,” he says.
“When I was a kid, like, I used to go to, like, the Jack’s Challa Fish and Chip Shop, and I’d froth it because whenever my mom would get stuff I’d be like, ‘please $2 I just want to play this’ and if I was on a roll, even if she’s got the food, I was like, ‘I don’t want to leave this’.
“I thought the same thing with this new place if I put something there, then it could be cool like, the kids play it while the parents in the morning wait for their morning coffee, it’s like, old school.”
You can find Prove Patisserie and Get Stuf’d goodies at Frank’s.
They’ll keep stocking baked goods, they’ll also try their hand at piping their own croissants in the Italian cornetto style, with vanilla cream and pistachio.
Think spiders, snacks and a classic range of corner store lollies.
“Grab a few liquorice pieces, like, why not?” Frankie says.
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“It’s just that sense of nostalgia, there was one [a corner store] literally at the end of my street in West Croydon, it was someone’s house and they opened it up, and you can just get, like, just liquorice, and like the UFOs filled with sherbert and stuff like that.
“It’s all high school kids and primary school kids around the way, like, yeah, why not?”
While the larger things, like the porchetta – lovingly cooked and sliced in-house – will still be made at the flagship café, everything else will be made at the new site after a few renos.
“We just knocked down a wall last night, we’re expanding the kitchen, it was a very small little kitchen area, but now we’ve brought it out,” Frankie says.
The new site of Frank Junior, coming soon to Holbrooks Road.
Frank Junior’s menu will differ from Aye Frank, with different sandwich combos keeping regulars flitting between stores to try them all.
“The porchetta we do here is like a traditional one with the salsa verde and, like, you know, roast capsicum and prov[olone] whereas the one we’re doing there, it’s gonna be like porchetta, burrata, truffle, you know, just like different variations,” Frankie says.
The mural outside Aye Frank is by Hari Koutlakis, who’s also slated to take over a wall in the new store.
Despite having his doubts about opening Aye Frank in the winter of 2023, they’ve built a community through the shop.
“We had a one-year party, and just seeing all these regular customers come in, and just realising in that moment in time, we’ve made this community,” Frankie says.
“There’s regulars we’ve hung out with outside of here now, you know, with Run Club, jazz nights and, like all the other things that are going to come – Aye Frank speed dating loading, it’s gonna be a hoot.”
“It’s been nearly a year of Run Club, on and off. It has its waves,” Frank says.
“Like, in the winter, people dip out, a lot of people message me, like, ‘I got a wedding tonight, I’m not making run club Sunday morning’ and that’s fine, it doesn’t have to be like church on a Sunday morning.”
You can expect the same chill approach with a milk-bar fit out this summer, with Frank Junior slated to open in late November.
In the meantime, Aye Frank is open 7 days at 1/254 Grange Road, Flinders Park.