Lox in a Box's New Bondi Lunch Counter Opens Very Soon
The word “salad” doesn’t really do justice to Candy Berger’s offering at Greenbergs.
“The standard salad you’d make at home – chopped cucumber, tomato, maybe some onion chucked in a bowl – that’s not what we do,” the Lox in a Box founder says of her new Warners Avenue spot in Bondi. “At home, you’re not going to roast pumpkin with baharat, pickle onion, or toast almonds for your quick lunch.”
Greenbergs is as thoughtful as Berger’s choice of ingredients would suggest. The “counter and caterer” officially opens for lunch and dinner next week. The offering is vibrant and delicious, with an Ottolenghi-like reverence for vegetables and salads.
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That’s not to say it’s vegetarian. Poached chicken, slow-cooked brisket, schnitzel and Ora King salmon make appearances in the regular rotation of six salads and sides – but vegetables are the star of the show.
“Every salad always has something crunchy, roasted, steamed, fresh. We want it to be really pleasing to eat. For example, our Gaia salad has snap peas, broccoli, green beans, pepitas, kale, spinach and Greenbergs’ herby ranch dressing. We’ve also got a harvest salad with roasted pumpkin and carrot, za’atar, cauliflower, pickled currants, couscous, fried shallots and feta.”
At Greenbergs, dressings are the proverbial icing on the cake. The ranch uses Lox in a Box’s schnitzel sauce as a base, then zests it up with “heaps of herbs” and lemon. Meanwhile, the harvest dressing has a base of pomegranate molasses, with sumac and a mellow vinegar. “Dressings are the essence of Greenbergs,” Berger says. “I’m obsessed. The idea is that the dressings are so good, you’ll want to drink them.”
Berger rattles off her menu as though Greenbergs has been open for years – and in a way it has.
Before Lox in a Box opened as a Bondi hole-in-the-wall in 2019, Berger ran Fed Kitchen, a catering company. The widely adored bagelry began as a way to earn money during the week when the catering biz wasn’t busy. During Covid, demand for catering dropped off completely and the bagels businesses took off – there are locations in Bondi, Coogee, Manly and Marrickville, plus a food truck. And now there’s Greenbergs, which stands across the road from Lox in a Box’s Glenayr Avenue shop.
Although they’re siblings, Greenbergs doesn’t compete with Lox. “I want it to be really clear: at Lox, we do bagels and Jewish-style deli food. Greenbergs is about plentiful salads, meats and fish. We don’t even do coffee – we’re doing freshly steeped tea-based drinks.”
This location – most recently the corner that housed Joel Bennetts’s Burger Park and Fish Shop – marks a full-circle moment for Berger. “In 2019, I stood in front of this development, thinking it would be a great place to have a deli-salad bar, but I didn’t want to commit so early on. Five years later, the Fish Shop boys told me they were moving on and asked if we were interested in the shop. I always had a good vibe about the place, and the timing was right, so here we are.”
Greenbergs Counter & Catering opens at Shop 3/17 Warners Avenue, Bondi, on Wednesday June 18, 2025.
