Find a New General Store Stocking Locally Made Provisions Alongside Marrickville Park

Forgot milk? Bread? A bunch of mint, bulb of garlic or a tin of tomatoes? It’s times like these you long for a mixed business on your block – somewhere you can avoid the shop-shops, and you don’t have to convince yourself the meal won’t miss what you forgot. For anyone living in the Marrickville-Dulwich Hill-Lewisham patch surrounding Marrickville Park, there’s a brand new general store, opened by longtime locals, ready and waiting for you.

Marrickville Park General Store arrives from the Bespoke & Grind team, couple Mao Van Starrex and Michael Goodey, who have just taken on the large space next door. “I’ve been in the community for a long time,” Starrex says. “I raised my kids in the community. This is my family, the community that we created next door at the cafe, and this is an expansion of it – the way I want to share with the people surrounding us.”

Behind the big corner window straddling Livingstone and Sydenham roads, you’ll find cane baskets piled high with tomatoes, bananas and artichokes. There are fine herbs, lengthy bunches of rhubarb and a rainbow of carrots. Shelves hold mustards and vinegars, tinned fish and chippies, packets of pasta and crackers.

Fridges stock canned drinks, milk and coconut water, jars of yoghurt, ghee and tallow. Nice olives cosy up to free-range, organic cuts from Dulwich Hill Gourmet Meats, LP’s charcuterie and Vanella cheese, and there are golden brown house-made pies – Bespoke & Grind signatures – ready to bake at home.

All of it is undeniably charming. Starrex knew what she wanted, tasking set-builder Goodey with transforming the room from a chiropractor’s practice to grocer. “I just said ‘This is the vision, can you make it happen?’” she laughs. Five consultation rooms were stripped out, making way for a collection of antique pieces from the couple’s home, Marketplace and auctions. Wood that Goodey salvaged from a film set fit perfectly as benches in the windows, where the gold-painted logo references the palm trees in the park opposite. Outside, five layers of paint were stripped, revealing glossy butcher’s tiles.

“I get excited and inspired by the colourful veggies and fruits and greenery, old things,” says Starrex.

When Broadsheet visits, a very smiley woman drops in and grabs a hunk of pumpkin and some garlic, another picks up a few pieces of citrus and a jar of something nice.

“It’s been the most positive project I’ve ever worked on,” says Goodey. “People will go backwards and forwards, they’ll go to the park, then they’ll come to the window.”

More often than not, they’ll leave with something to snack on or cook with, before or after nabbing a seat outside at Bespoke & Grind.

Marrickville Park General Store
78 Livingstone Road, Marrickville 

Hours:
Mon to Fri 7.30am–7pm
Sat & Sun 7.30am–4pm 

@marrickvilleparkgeneralstore