Marrickville is bursting with excellent eateries – from Vietnamese restaurants to Greek takeaways, more craft breweries than you can poke a beer paddle at, as well as pizza joints and even small bars. What it's in shorter supply of (if you ask us) are places that serve up top-notch café fare. Enter White Rabbit, a café that has proved so popular that it’s made like a bunny and procreated in Drummoyne, Double Bay and, now, Marrickville.
While White Rabbit has become a little chain of sorts, there's nothing cookie-cutter about these family-owned cafés (except for their delicious monster dark chocolate and sea salt cookies) – each spot caters to its local community and vibe.
Like any good café worth its spot in a neighbourhood, it serves up eggs every which way: fried, poached or scrambled with Sonoma sourdough and Pepe Saya butter; XO chilli scramble; a brekkie burger with all the fillings; hollandaise-laden Florentine; a big brekkie; and avo toast with eggs. They also satisfy vegans with non-eggy and all sorts of dietary-friendly delights – as well as sweet tooths with ricotta pancakes, açaí and “famous” granola bowls.
For lunch, every taste is catered to: there’s Vietnamese-style crackling pork salad; a citrusy tuna ceviche bowl; a chicken or salmon Caesar; as well as crowd-pleasing classics such as burgers, pastas and risottos.
We’ve eaten the parmesan- and herb-crusted chicken sanga with brown butter aioli, cabbage, fennel slaw and pickles on sourdough, and it’s a treat – the stuff of Sunday cheat day dreams.
There's also a bakery – they serve up artisanal baked goods by expert bakers Sonoma, as well as stocking them for take-away purchases. Then there are their pastries – alongside their in-house pastry goods, they stock treats from the renowned Goose Bakery in Forest Lodge.
Lucky for those over St Peters/Enmore/Newtown way, White Rabbit is over at that end of Marrickville, in the space that the once-popular West Juliett used to occupy, so it’s easily accessible to lots of Inner Westies to hop on over to.
