There is a tale of two Marrickvilles. The first exists, mostly, in decades-old memories and newspaper articles. This is the Marrickville some Sydneysiders recount like a lost episode of Underbelly, with drive-bys and drug deals (but some damn good banh mi sandwiches). Then there’s the other Marrickville – now a bona-fide tourist destination, where groups of young people wander the Inner West Ale Trail, queue for Mont Blanc iced coffees and dine at hatted restaurants in industrial backstreets.

Illawarra Road, the main thoroughfare connecting Marrickville Road to Cooks River, has undergone major changes as developers prepare for the new Metro station, set to open this year. But there’s still a little grit, a little lived-in character, that persists around the pockets of gentrification. You can see it in the abandoned shopfronts neighbouring new builds, the footpath sales of home produce opposite the fancy gym, and the ’90s era mural warning “Don’t share needles” beside the Metro construction site.

The food scene, too, combines Marrickville old and new. It’s characterised by Greek and Vietnamese cuisines, introduced by migrants in the postwar period, and built upon by the next generation with neighbourhood bars, an ethical butcher shop and a diverse mix of cafes.

This is the home of Marrickville Pork Roll, renowned for making one of Sydney’s best banh mi sandwiches; Athena Cake Shop, a continental bakery that’s been selling Greek biscuits and pastries since the ’70s; and at least 10 restaurants serving pho (hence the moniker Little Vietnam, bestowed by the Inner West Council in 2022).

Soon, it will also become the home of SIT, a new cafe from the team behind Baba’s Place (also in Marrickville) and Randwick’s Corner 75, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2026 Restaurant of the Year.

For this guide, I’ve focused on the stretch of Marrickville where I’ve lived for five years – a blip compared to many of my neighbours, but long enough to have tried most places. I know that when everything else is closed for a public holiday, the Fruit Mart beside The Yeeros Shop will be selling fresh produce; that Dana’s Deli Cafe makes a great take-home moussaka; and that I should really try the new cafe by the train-replacement bus stop, Cafely, because it looks like they make a mean Vietnamese salted coffee.

(And could someone please put something aside from a new tobacconist in the empty shopfronts? We already have four.)

This collection includes delicious weeknight dinners for less than $20, knock-off specials including $7 glasses of wine, and restaurants with live Latin music and Peruvian small plates. There’s the best place to buy fresh pandan leaves for your next baking project, and family sized home-cooked lasagne for $30, but remember – it’s also just a starting point.

Cafes

Athena Cake Shop Marrickville

Continental bakeries don’t get enough love, and this one is particularly special. Former owners Athena and Aristomenis Spyropoulos opened Athena Cake Shop in 1974, and sold the business to the Haralambou family in 2023. Since then, there have been some tasteful additions to the line-up of classic shortbread, honey biscuits and spanakopita. Among them are must-try pistachio almond long biscuits and pistachio-dusted honey cakes, available for takeaway or eat-in with a house-blend espresso. The family plan to open a second Marrickville cafe before winter, with a larger seating area, beneath their warehouse near the Sydenham Metro.

412 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, athenacakeshop.com.au

Tita

Tita doesn’t take herself too seriously: kitschy plastic tablecloths and purple-hued ube pastries are all part of the Filipino-inspired brunch experience, and the dishes are familiar but fun. French toast travels to Manila, where it’s doused in maple condensed milk and served with purple whipped cream. Brekkie muffins, made with soft pandesal dough, are some of Sydney’s best, stacked with juicy longganisa (pork sausage) patties. Try the Manila latte while you’re there – a double espresso shot with sweet condensed milk and ice.

Shop 4/359 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, instagram.com/tita.marrickville

Banh Cuon Ba Oanh

Arrive early to score a weekend table at Banh Cuon Ba Oanh. The bright-yellow corner shop attracts long lines for its specialty dish, banh cuon: silky sheets of paper-thin steamed rice noodles served with fillings such as steamed pork and fried strips of beef. Owner Minh Thuy Nguyen named the eatery after her mother, Ba Oanh, who spent decades making the banh cuon in Northern Vietnam.

They still cook together in the small restaurant kitchen, alongside several other family members, and recently expanded their menu to include new fillings. “A lot of people like the fried cinnamon pork because it has more flavour,” Nguyen says. She recommends trying the free-range chicken congee for a hearty breakfast. Check the weather before visiting – seating is exclusively outdoors, with limited coverage.

343 Illawarra Road, Marrickville

Restaurants, bars and takeaway

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Marrickville Pork Roll

“This is the original and the best Marrickville Pork Roll,” says Nga Du, who co-founded the banh mi shop in a former toilet block with husband Khiem Du in 2008, and moved to a larger space next door in 2021.

Their Vietnamese pork sandwiches are consistently ranked among the city’s best – the white bread rolls are baked fresh (crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, so large it’s almost intimidating) then slathered with rich pâté and stacked with cold-cut pork, pickled vegetables and fresh salad.

Lengthy weekend queues led to a further four venues opening across Sydney, but Du considers this one, where she works, special: “Because I love it, I put my whole heart into it,” she says. The crackling pork belly is her pick, but all options remain affordable, priced between $8 to $11. Once your sandwich is in-hand, head to the original shopfront with its faded red awning to buy a fresh sugarcane juice from what is now 236 Juice Bar.

236 Illawarra Road, Marrickville

VN Street Foods

The Vietnamese restaurant that became so popular it had to expand into a second dining room and down the footpath. It’s budget-friendly (mains under $20), fast-paced, and serves some of the most flavourful Northern-style pho, bun cha and caramelised pork belly in Marrickville. Order from the counter (the customisable bento boxes are a great choice, allowing you to try a few different dishes if it’s your first time), pull up a milk crate, and settle in for the people (and dog) watching. There can be a queue on weekends, but you won’t have to wait long, and if you’re not completely satiated by the time your bowl is empty, there’s a fun selection of wobbly desserts such as house-made flan and coconut jelly.

294/296 Illawarra Road, Marrickville

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Thirstville Bottleshop & Bar

It might have started off slow, but Imogen Murphy and Todd Norcott’s drink-in bottle shop Thirstville has become a go-to for knock-off drinks on Illawarra Road. The generous daily specials ($7 glasses of wine on Mondays, $7 schooners from a rotating tap list on Tuesdays, no corkage fee for drinks purchased and consumed in-store on Wednesdays, and BYO food daily) caught customers’ attention. But it’s the wide range (250 craft beers, 1200 boutique wines and an entire fridge of fun non-alcoholic drinks) and welcoming neighbourhood vibe that keeps them coming back. This is the kind of place where you can comfortably sit alone with a book, play a game of cards with friends, or wander in from a walk with your dog. There’s also a free pool table upstairs, and the occasional comedy night presented by local act Imaan Hadchiti.

300 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, thirstville.com.au

Titus Jones Bar

It’s been 10 years since Merrick Webb stepped away from a marketing position at Warner Music to open Titus Jones, a small tequila-focused bar with one of Sydney’s best Taco Tuesday nights. There’s a lamb taco (meat smoked out back for seven hours), a crispy fish skin taco with tuna tonnato, and “chorizo”-style tofu with aguacate salsa. All the salsas are made in house and everything is gluten-free.

“It’s become such a big part of our identity now … it’s just really popped off for us, especially since COVID, when we had three different delivery services and lines around the block,” Webb says. He stepped up the food and drinks offering after partner Shannon Kean came on board – she’s the brains behind their signature Pho Mary, a Bloody Mary made with pho broth from Khoi Eatery across the road. For kick-ons, wander up to Lazybones Lounge for live music.

337 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, instagram.com/titusjonesbar

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Maki and Ramen

Husband-and-wife-team Patrick Wong and Yuko Chinn have been serving ramen to the Marrickville community for eight years, and they’ve developed a loyal following. The small restaurant is packed at dinnertime, as families and commuters opt for a quick, healthy-ish meal over cooking at home.

The fitout is simple – warm timber, Japanese posters on the wall, and wall-mounted display cases with anime figurines – and it’s usually Yuko on the floor, waving you towards the nearest empty table. But the most important thing to know is that the ramen is good, very good.

“My family migrated to Australia when I was a teenager and I always held on to that memory of Japanese food, the feeling of it,” Chinn says. Wong, a trained chef (“Very talented,” says Chinn) makes all the noodles and broth from scratch, and while the black garlic ramen is the bestseller, you should try the special grilled chicken ramen if you feel like something lighter.

409 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, makiandramen.com

Pepito’s

Pepito’s is a Peruvian restaurant and bar owned by cinematographer Jose Alkon. He works with head chef Sushant Khatri to bring his traditional Peruvian family recipes to a modern audience, using local produce to create a menu of snacky small plates.

The leche de tigre is the signature dish (fish ceviche, prawns and fried calamari layered with a punchy lime and chilli sauce), but you should also try perennial favourite papa a la Huancaina (potatoes with salsa criolla and a gently spicy, creamy sauce) as a side to grilled ox heart, beef tenderloin and chicken skewers. The bar specialises in pisco, a high-proof grape brandy named Peru’s national spirit, and if you’re partial to a margarita you’ll appreciate the creamy zest of a pisco sour. There’s seating inside among the vintage movie posters, or a fairy-lit courtyard out the back.

Keep an eye on their social media – the best time to book is when there’s a live music event, like Peruvian punk rock.

276 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, pepitos.com.au

The Yeeros Shop

The time-honoured Australian tradition of ordering a small serving of chips and receiving enough to feed a family of four, wrapped in white paper, continues at The Yeeros Shop. The takeaway restaurant opened back in 1968 under the ownership of Greek expat Yiannis Benetos, then passed onto Stamatios (Steve) “Taki” Plangetis, who ran the business with his family for more than 30 years before Poppy Papadopoulos and former staffer Kostas Tomaras took the reins in the 2010s. Despite the changing hands, The Yeeros Shop remains famously cash-only (there is an ATM inside), with $6 hand-cut chips and spit-roasted beef, lamb or chicken yeeros in a large pita with salad for $15. As a bonus, it’s open until 11pm (and midnight for takeaway) daily – a rarity in Marrickville.

431 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, theyeerosshop.com.au

Retail

Whole Beast Butchery

This is no ordinary butcher shop. Led by butcher Marcus Papadopoulo, Whole Beast specialises in sustainable nose-to-tail butchery, carving dry-aged cuts to order and using the remainder of the animal to make everything from red-skinned hot dogs to slices of smoked pastrami.

Amina Latypova, Papadopoulo’s partner, ensures nothing goes to waste by creating affordable ready-made freezer meals (family-size bolognese lasagne for $30, mini kids’ meals such as chicken mushroom risotto from $5), specialty items (bacon toffee cookie dough) and condiments (smoked chilli jam, lime cucumber cordial).

Fans of Whole Beast’s food truck, Tony Eats (stationed at Chuck and Son’s Brewing Co. in St Peters) will find its special burger sauce (“Even if I knew what was in it, I couldn’t tell you,” says butcher Nick Topalidis) and whole hot-smoked trout in the smallgoods fridge. Good luck getting out without buying more than you planned.

368 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, instagram.com/wholebeastbutchery

Hong Phuoc Asian Grocery and Thai Hung Supermarket

If you’ve ever wondered where to buy fresh pandan leaves, salted duck eggs, or those knife-cut Chinese wheat noodles with the wavy edges, it’s time for a grocery shop on Illawarra Road. Hong Phuoc and Thai Hung are next-door neighbours, and each sell fresh hard-to-find (and sometimes, hard-to-identify) produce including calamansi, longan and breadfruit at affordable prices.

There’s a lot of crossover, but Thai Hung is the choice for ready-made meals and desserts like pandan bean or cassava cake, while Hong Phuoc has a massive selection of dessert supplies (tapioca pearls, ube essence) and a beautiful display of fresh herbs.

297 Illawarra Road and 307/309 Illawarra Road, Marrickville