Unless you know it’s there, you may drive right on past, as Stix is in an industrial area of Marrickville, situated amongst a few factories and mechanics. However, if you’re meeting friends, do pay this place a visit, but be sure to give yourself enough time to find a car park.
The cafe occupies a large space and is a warehouse style arrangement, with concrete floors, roller door and high ceilings. A long counter features all the pastries and cakes, with a wall of shelves housing their loves of bread and a refrigerator with all their meats, relishes, butter and pickled veggies for sale.
There are long communal tables and timber chairs inside and a few outside, which was great for us to bring our puppy.
We hear that everything is made with produce and protein from owner David Allison’s farm, which supplies a number of restaurants around Sydney. This quality organic produce, combined with a star team of chefs sees a top menu come to fruition with the likes of a breakfast congee, okonomiyaki or rice with school prawns. Whilst the food is on the pricy side, it is certainly high quality. The omelette is probably the best we’ve had in a long time. The light fluffy omelette is presented beautifully with miso eggplant, charred broccollini, avocado, cherry tomatoes and ginger-shallot dressing. For $24, we recommend serving it with a slice of two of bread. You can also pay an extra $5 for the salmon pastrami which was lovely and really added to the flavour.
We’d be keen to try the lunch menu as the eggplant katsu sando, and salads sound lovely, and right up our alley.
People trek here for pastries and we can certainly see why. The crowd pleaser; the almond croissants are crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside and the sweet almond filling to top it off. Not to mention, they do a variation on this with their Pina Colada croissant that has a roasted pineapple, toasted coconut, and macadamia nut.
The cafe is also host to patisserie goods such as the Russian caramelised honey cake, a superstar at the moment, with its pastry layers and sweet filling. In addition, there is a tropical mango paradise and a yuzu mousse zen cake.
You can also get the famous Basque cheesecake in slices it in full, and we tried the vanilla tart type. They’ve also got a cool Chocolate babka, reminiscent of those Seinfeld days.
Pies come out from 8:30. Since they are $19 to dine in, with salad and relish, we chose to get it takeaway as it’s only 8.50. We ate it at home, the beef shin pie was delicious inside, a fatty mix of meat with a buttery pastry. Topped with some relish, it is a good pie.
The staff were lovely, in particular the effervescent front of house Grant. He was efficient, friendly and made it a very positive experience. We love that he clearly loves his job.
Coming soon is a taste of the Hawkesbury seven-course degustation to showcase the produce from Hawkesbury region, paired with Australian wines. See their website for more details.
20 Chapel st Marrickville
Hope
Tuesday to Friday 7:30-2:30
Sat and Sunday 7:30-3:20