First Look: Olympic Meats Charges Into Marrickville With a Charcoal Grill and House-Stretched Filo

Glistening kontosouvli is slowly spinning, dripping juices onto hot charcoal while flames spring up with wisps of smoke. Manning the grill is a chef basting the chunky skewered meat with branches of oregano. The kitchen at Olympic Meats is a mesmerising sight that can easily distract you from grabbing a menu or requesting a seat.

Halfway between a gyradiko and taverna, the new Marrickville eatery has been a decade in the making – and a debut for chef-owner Timothy Cassimatis. “I had a dream to have my own shop, so it’s like, ‘What are the stepping stones to achieve it?’” Cassimatis tells Broadsheet. “You need money and you’ve got to practice the things you want to make – so I did that.”

First, he cut his teeth at Vic’s Meats, learning the ins and outs of butchery before a few years at Barzaari, working his way up to head chef before Covid hit. He started his catering business Tim Fresh, selling pre-made Hellenic meals, before getting on the tools at Kosta’s Takeaway and Whole Beast Butchery, where he learned how to make “really good sausages” from owner Marcus Papadopoulo.

With this CV, it’s no wonder he’s taking no shortcuts at Olympic Meats: everything – including the hand-stretched filo – is made in-house, and done the old-school way.

Take the loukanika, one piece in the array of rotating meze. The pork, lamb and lentil sausage has a piquant start and punchy finish – in part due to the lentils being dashed with a house-made red wine vinegar derived from Cassimatis’s yiayia’s 50-year-old mother vinegar. It’s wonderful with the airy, cooked-to-order sourdough pita, which takes two days to make and comes hot from its dedicated wood-fire oven.

Meat from Whole Beast Butchery is brined one day and marinated the next, ready for chicken and pork yiros. It’s layered onto a rod for grilling, before being piled into a pita or onto a plate, then joined by pickles, veggies and sauces (like a house-made yoghurt made from a culture imported from Greece).

The lamb kontosouvli spends nearly six hours over charcoal – and it’s the dish Cassimatis really wants you to order. The meat is bashed with a “big fucking cleaver” from Greece then topped with oregano, lemon and onion salad. “We’re trying to really give that almost primal sort of feeling.”

One thing you can be sure of is no chips in your yiros. “Having that thick bit of starch in there just takes away from the effort that a chef has gone to – to marinate the beautiful meat. The true way to have it, literally, is just meat, onion, tomato, with parsley, dust the paprika and either yoghurt or tzatziki.” But that doesn’t mean the chips aren’t special. Cut on site, steamed, twice-fried in beef tallow: a new golden challenger has appeared for Sydney’s best chip. A generous shake of Nostimini imparts a Mediterranean umami edge.

“I spent a lot of time mirroring my grandmother [in the kitchen], who [lived] just down the road. They still live there, so it hits a little bit close to home, opening up in this area. [Marrickville is] very Vietnamese-dominated now. But when I was a child, there was a lot more Greek stores and a very large Greek community. So I feel like I’ve come full circle, opening a shop here.”

Marrickville officially became Little Greece in 2021, and while there’s been an influx of Greek restaurants across Sydney, they opened elsewhere. With the grills firing at Olympic Meats, it feels like a shop that should always have existed in Marrickville: a homage to the past and salutation to the future.

Olympic Meats
12 Dudley Street, Marrickville

Hours:
Wed & Thu 5pm–9.30pm
Fri & Sat midday–4pm, 5pm–10.30pm
Sun midday–8pm

olympicmeats.shop
@olympic.meats