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There are sportspeople who swear by drinking pickle juice. Cricketer David Warner swigged the stuff to manage cramps halfway to a double century in 2022. Daniil Medvedev sipped the fermented liquid to sooth spasming muscles during a 5½-hour Australian Open battle with Rafael Nadal.

Sitting in Serva, a serene, orange-tinged cafe and pickling palace in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the medicinal aspects of owner Miles Ackermans’ vast range of pickles and preserves, served in sandwiches, toasties, muffins and salads, are far from our minds.

Instead, we’re swooning over his umami-rich mushroom toastie, a marvel of portobello and Swiss browns laced with kombu butter and served with zucchini pickle and blueberry chutney.

Then it’s a muffin filled with a fried egg, gouda, shallot chimichurri and jalapeno relish that makes my mouth buzz with such tangy heat that an appreciative pause is needed between bites.

We down the roast chicken sandwich – Ackermans’ favourite for his own lunch – its flavours whooshing from blue cheese, macadamia, more chimichurri and confit garlic ranch.

But, boy, the Reuben is a real marvel. Packed with Blackmore wagyu, apple and celery kraut, coffee mustard and Monterey Jack cheese, it’s meaty, crunchy, melty and plain majestic.

The space is an oasis of handcrafted goodness. Between paintings of avocados and oranges, shelves are lined with pickles, relishes, chutneys and ferments. Customers, some fresh off the Seaforth-to-Manly bus stopping at the door, eat hash browns dappled with herb salt and fat salad sandwiches stuffed with beetroot relish, lime-pickle aioli, sauerkraut and pickled fennel. Ceramic bowls and plates are made by local artists.

Ackermans’ lightbulb moment for a career in pickling came when he created a blueberry chutney while head chef at The Herring Room in Manly and customers kept asking to take it home. Through working Serva’s front counter, the owner-chef discovered a new joy: chatting with customers.

“After years of being hidden away as a chef, the biggest surprise is how much of a relationship I’ve developed with the locals in Seaforth,” he says. “As I’m making sandwiches for people, they’re asking about how I make the pickles, what are the benefits of ferments and so forth. It’s been really eye-opening.

“If you told me when I first opened eight months ago that the main part of my day would be remembering people’s names and having a conversation for about six hours with different people, I would have been very surprised.”

And while pickle juice is not on the drinks menu, Ackermans is right behind fermented food being a healthy option.

“I’m eating my pickles seven days a week,” he says, “and I’m definitely the healthiest I’ve ever been.”