Restaurant of the Year team open Marrickville cafe with pancakes and church pews
SIT is a social enterprise cafe from the creative forces behind hatted restaurants Baba’s Place and Corner 75.
The new Marrickville cafe from the team behind Good Food’s Restaurant of the Year, Corner 75, is called SIT, and it’s really leaning into the name.
The 40-seat venue, which opens on Illawarra Road this Saturday, gives diners various ways to lounge, snack and interact, from wooden church pews to a movable multi-level “amphitheatre” installation made of pastel-splotched recycled plastic, designed in collaboration with Sydney studio Defy Design.
“The amphitheatre in particular is a looser approach to how you might sit and gather, which I think shows where our heart is with this space,” says creative director Alexander Kelly.
There’s plenty of heart in all aspects of SIT’s development. This is a social enterprise cafe, so it applies a community-focused lens to everything it does, from offering free Wi-Fi to training and upskilling locals. It’s also located on the ground floor of Nightingale, a social housing not-for-profit that provides rental apartments to those in need for 20 per cent less than the market rate.
On the food front, executive chef Jean-Paul “JP” El Tom has stepped away from the “suburban cuisine” served at the team’s first hatted restaurant, Baba’s Place (also in Marrickville), to create a produce-focused all-day menu. He describes it as thoughtful and nourishing, with a bit of decadence thrown in.
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Sign upA rolled omelette made from West Walla Farm eggs is set gently in butter and stuffed with a cheese and silverbeet mixture similar to a spanakopita filling. Steamed trout arrives in a seasoned cultured cream sauce alongside a wedge of salt-baked sweet potato. A custom pancake griddle designed by Sam Fraraccio (Melbourne’s The Brick Chef) produces diner-style pancakes made with yoghurt, rather than buttermilk, for softness and tartness.
Coffee comes from Reuben Hills, A.P Bakery Bread is on the loaves, and an alcohol licence paves the way for a future drinks program.
There will also be a regular rotation of gelato and granita, made in El Tom’s prized Carpigiani machine, the Ferrari of gelato makers. Expect flavours including vanilla, chocolate and maple syrup.
Like Baba’s Place, SIT is a collaborative effort. Along with Kelly and El Tom, James Bellos heads up operations, and head of hospitality Joy-Della El Tom leads the service. Art director Zaal Kaboli oversees the decor, which is dotted with familiar Baba’s Place motifs, such as a Perspex light fixture designed to look like a lace tablecloth, created by Domus Vim. Wall art and sculptures, including panels of breeze blocks and a three-metre aluminium print of a classical-era figure brandishing a garden chair, are the work of Alien Spaces, the same artist who created the wildflower garden bathroom design at Randwick’s Corner 75.
The team hopes to recreate the sense of community and family that has come to define Baba’s Place.
“The service at Baba’s Place is authentic, not in a posturing way but from a real place of hospitality,” says Joy-Della El Tom. The same spirit carries through to SIT, somewhere her brother JP hopes will become “the kind of place you can eat at every day,” he says.
Open daily for breakfast and lunch
2/387 Illawarra Road, Marrickville, comesit.com.au