The home of two locals.

How it started

A gap, a lease torn up, and the long way round.

Around 2015 the Northern Beaches had no shortage of good food, but nowhere doing the kind of contemporary, casual Mexican we wanted to eat. So we set out to build it.

The first lease was in Freshwater, and it fell through. The landlord decided Freshwater did not want a Mexican restaurant, tore up the lease and handed back the deposit. So we opened in Avalon instead. Before the doors opened in 2017, we spent five weeks in Mexico, most of it in Oaxaca, learning the food at the source.

Alma opened on a corner near the beach and has been pouring margaritas and feeding long lunches ever since. Then in 2022 we finally got our Freshwater room, in the exact spot where that first lease was torn up. We called it St Alma. Full circle.

Two venues, one way of doing things. Coastal Mexican food, a serious agave list, and a room people come back to. If you have never been, sit at the bar. Either bar.