Sydney’s café boom is showing no signs of slowing down as the city’s appetite for a bite and a brew continues to swell. It means business operators are having to up the ante when it comes to their food offerings: if it’s not diverse, on-trend (read: featuring matcha) or catering for different dietaries, there’s a chance it won’t see out the year.
Enter Marrickville’s which, thankfully for the good folks of the inner-west, ticks all the above boxes. Old neighbours Benjamin Terkalas (who used to run nearby Beejays) and Kabir Sayed (ex head chef of Dove and Olive) are heading up the café and grocer, which is making a point of spotlighting local artisans whose products they’re also retailing.
“We’re using Feather and Bone [butchery] and Pepe Saya butter – local produce is a big part of what we do, so we’re collaborating with other labels to showcase what other artisans are doing,” Terkalas tells SBS.
For the most part (Pepe Sayer butter, a burger and a couple of other staples aside), the menu is dairy-free – a conscious move by chef Sayed and Terkalas who wanted LABLD to cater for all.
“We’re very vegan-friendly, too. We tried to build a menu that we could offer out to everybody, and it wasn’t difficult,” Terkalas says. “When you think of ‘vegan’ or ‘vegetarian’, sometimes it can be quite hard – I’ve got a Greek background and I love meat, but I also really enjoy the creativity of what [a vegetarian] menu has to offer.”
Despite Terkalas’s Greek background and Sayed’s Bangladeshi one, the menu mostly sticks to Asian flavours, inspired by Sayed’s travels through the region. The pandan pancakes with honeycomb cream, caramelised banana, meringues and honeycomb shards will please the dessert-for-breakfast crowd. And they’re also hand-making momos (Himalayan dumplings) with three different fillings: chicken, veg, and an Australiana-style breakfast momo with wine-infused bacon, eggs and shallots. Terkalas thinks the bird’s nest is worth a mention, too: poached eggs wrapped in fried potato “spaghetti” with avocado and sil-gochu (Korean red pepper).
Himalayan momos (dumplings) come in three flavours, including a breakfast-style bacon and eggs version. Source: LABLD
Local designer Phoebe Bullimore has created a pared pack space celebrating the imperfections of the former corner store site with a mix of raw materials, white marble and mosaic tiles. Seating spans booths to window stools and larger communal tables framed by existing textured walls. Coffee is by Marrickville stallwarts Mecca with other roasters on weekly rotation, and Brickfields in Chippendale are powering the bread and baked treats - hello black sesame and coconut cookies.
“People are educated in eating and drinking these days - it’s a part of Sydney’s culture and lifestyle. We’re serving honest food that we love and outsourcing to high quality local producers.”
132-134 Illawarra Road, Marrickville
