When you arrive at MLK Deli, a sea blue, three-month-old Surry Hills sandwich and pastry cafe grounded in Uzbekistani, Afghan and Turkish food flavours, a cheery man who does not work there may greet you.

On my visit, a cold, wet Saturday afternoon, he is standing by the door next to a brown paper handwritten wall menu of eight sandwiches.

We both look at the list, topped by a brioche breakfast roll filled with bacon, eggs, a hash brown and lashings of house-made six-hour smoked and cooked brisket.

Our eyes move to the seven lunch offerings of ciabatta or focaccia filled with Afghan lamb meatballs, Uzbek-style chicken thighs, brisket pastrami and sauerkraut, olive mortadella with pesto and stracciatella, eggplant, grilled halloumi, tahini and artichoke drizzled with hot honey, and smoked tofu, sun-dried tomatoes, coleslaw and plant-based chipotle on a potent vegan number.

“They’re all fantastic,” the man says, his hands warming in puffer jacket pockets. “What are you thinking of having?”

Rugged-up customers file in, queuing at the biscuit, pastry and fresh flower-edged counter opposite. MLK Deli’s owner, Myra Karakelle, is taking orders. Few cafes feature an owner and chief cook as thrilled to be there as Karakelle.

Further inside, half a dozen tables and counter seats are filled with locals, friends and family groups hoeing into halal sandwiches while sipping hot tea and coffee. Shelves are lined with Italian sardines, Lebanese pickled turnips, Pakistani rose water and Turkish rosehip marmalade and hot finger peppers.

I ask the man, who seems part of the cafe but mainly stands by the door, what “Naomi’s Agrodolce”, a Deli Sando sandwich ingredient, is. “I’ll get you a sample,” he says.

He ferries the request to two staff members making sandwiches at another counter lined with bread, sauerkraut, pecorino, pesto, split olives, tahini dip, mortadella and more. One is slicing pink, fragrant brisket in a gleaming slicer beside the front window.

“It’s a delicious pineappley sauce,” he says, passing a small dish to sample. It is beautiful, a tart-sweet condiment made by Karakelle’s friend Naomi Lowry, head chef at Tucano’s, a nearby bar.

“You see?” says the man. “Incredible.”

He is right. I soon eat the Risky Brisket, which Karakelle and her husband spent nine months perfecting. Tender, smoky and spicy, it is the bee’s knees on rye ciabatta with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese with a pickle and salt-and-vinegar chips.

Equally so is MJ’s Chicken sandwich with juicy Uzbek-style meat fragrant with cumin, coriander and garlic and teamed with “magic sauce” and lettuce. Karakelle attributes its wonders to her mum’s cooking.

“For me, it’s nostalgia and the chicken that I grew up on,” she says. “Now that I’m older with a better palate I understand why I love it.”

Also excellent are the salt-sprinkled chocolate biscuits, plate-size Anzac biscuits and, cooling on a counter rack, “Puff delis”, sesame seed-sprinkled folded napkins of baked pastry holding brisket pastrami, pecorino and Swiss cheese.

MLK Deli, or Myra’s Little Kitchen, rose from Karakelle’s deep-rooted passion for food and a mid-life realisation. “It is like a baby that I nurtured in my womb for a very long time now,” she says.

After studying law and working in teaching and marketing, Karakelle, whose mother and father are from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan respectively, wowed friends and family with her lockdown cooking via social media. She sent them food parcels, expanded her dishes, many influenced by her mother’s recipes, and founded a daily activity.

When lockdown ended, cooking, experimenting with food and feeding people remained her favourite pastime. She quit her job, found a shop, stripped, repaired and refitted it and opened in March.

“It’s taken over my life. It’s stressful and I feel more responsible now than I ever have in my life for any employer,” she says.

“But I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”

Much later, Karakelle explains that the man at the door is a good friend. His pride at Karakelle’s first hospitality venture means he occasionally stays at the cafe all day, chatting and helping.

“It humbles me that he just loves it so much,” she says.

But Karakelle beats his passion. “I sometimes stop and think, ‘This is my job. My actual job’.

“It is everything I want to do.”