The Baba’s Place Team Invites You To Sit at Its New Inner West Cafe

Sit is a place to, well, sit. Around small sunny tables beside ceiling-height windows. On church pews underneath a loud, large-scale art piece. At a glossy-topped table embedded with donated lace doilies. Or on a pastel-yellow grandstand that diverted one tonne of plastic from landfill. Sit is the cafe the Baba’s Place crew just opened on Marrickville’s Illawarra Road.

The 40-seat social enterprise is a group project, in the street-level space of a 54-apartment social housing block. The hospitality team (Jean-Paul El Tom, Alex Kelly, Joy-Della El Tom, James Bellos and Zaal Kaboli) collaborated with not-for-profit Fresh Hope Communities and Nightingale Housing. But if you’re expecting a daytime version of Baba’s, you’re fresh out of luck.

“It’s been really nice to call it something that’s not, like, Baba’s Place,” Kelly says. “It doesn’t come with that authentic ethnic history and pressure. We can’t escape who we are – so there’s doilies, there’s breezeblocks, there’s religious iconography, there’s Lebanese food. Suburban touchpoints. But they’re separate projects.”

Jean-Paul is in the kitchen, where dishes are “forged by bacteria, sweetened by bees”. House-cultured yoghurts are plentiful (a berry-topped chocolate scoop, a pot-set with honey, and a smooth stirred number), and there are snacky serves of fruit and cheese. Plates of steak and eggs join silky rolled omelettes (filled with greens and feta, crowned with a meaty anchovy), and boiled eggs are chopped with house labneh, mint and za’atar, then stuffed into AP ficelle. Perfect pairs of pancakes arrive stacked under a melting sheet of butter.

“We’ve pretty much got a cremeria in here,” Jean-Paul says. “All the yoghurt, all the creams – there’s going to be different types of dairy ferments for different products. There’s yoghurt and whey in the pancakes [instead of the classic buttermilk] – all the waste [from the other dairy dishes] is in the pancakes.”

A custom Brick Chef flat plate cooks the pancakes to an even, diner-style brown, but it’s just one component of the “state of the art” kitchen. “When you order, the veg will be blanched, the eggs will be confited in butter. A lot of fruit, seasonal veg – minimal intervention. All we’re doing is applying heat.”

AP is on bread duty, and Reuben Hills is on the coffee machine. The drinks list includes maraschino-foam-topped cold brew, smoothies, frothy freddo espressos, frappes and juices, too. Need dessert? A homey carrot cake sits on the counter and sumac finger buns are in the works – or opt for maple granita with sour cream gelato.

Everything’s delivered with a service style that’s more restaurant than classic cafe. “We encourage our staff to show their personality, to interpret hospitality in their own way,” says Joy-Della. “It will still feel approachable and warm and casual – in that sense, like Baba’s – but in a cafe that might feel a little bit elevated.”

The space is as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional – and deeply collaborative. A lacey large-scale Domus Vim chandelier makes a statement as you walk in; then there’s the three-metre-wide Alien Spaces piece on the back wall. A textural silver moon hangs in the coffee corner, and Voluptuary’s shiny, belly-buttoned ceramics dress the tables. The communal table and a few chairs have been embedded with lace tablecloths and Iranian headscarves by RK Collective, there are ceramic stands for the egg rolls and frilly glass pendant lights in the windows. And there’s Defy Design’s fun, yellow grandstand made of recycled plastic.

You can keep up with all of it via Sit’s community noticeboard-style website and the fortnightly newsletter – to hear about what’s coming up (events, nighttime hours, menu changes) directly from the team.

“Sit is a cafe with an emphasis on thoughtful food, thoughtful produce and supply chains, and emphasis on collaboration, community, gathering,” Kelly says. “And Sit is a place to sit – there are many places to sit.”

Sit
2/387 Illawarra Road, Marrickville 

Hours:
Daily 7am–3pm

@sit.marrickville
comesit.com.au