Marrickville Hardcourt Tennis Club is what a sports club with schooners should be – somewhere that properly enhances the community rather than running on the gambling losses of its members. The board of the minimum-frills clubhouse voted to ditch its pokies last year, thus making its Portuguese restaurant Casa do Benfica an even more welcoming place to visit for cheap wine, caramel flan and bacalhau a lagareiro (baked cod and roast potatoes thoroughly coated in olive oil and garlic).

The garlic mushrooms here are the stuff of local legend, and the espetada grilled beef skewers are more tender and keenly flavoured than steaks for three times the price elsewhere.

Consider building your lunch around the arroz de marisco, a wet (in a good, bisque-y way) seafood rice teeming with prawns, clams, mussels and crab. It’s a centrepiece for returning to between bites of other things, such as crisp-fried cubes of potato rustling with pickled carrot, pipis and wine-marinated pork.

Good to know: Dishes can take a minute to come out. Kick back with a few Portuguese lagers and just go with the flow.

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