Lattes Amongst the Leaves: Haberfield and Garnish Fine Foods
In this post, Big T introduces us to Haberfield and our first cafe; Garnish Fine Foods. Double blog time!
Introduction to Haberfield
Starting this series has been difficult for me to do, but the only way I can move on to any form of an article requires a description of what Haberfield means to me. Haberfield is bounded by the Hawthorne Canal to the East, Dobbroyd Point to the North, Parramatta Road to the South and the Iron Cove Creek to the West. It is one of the strangest places I have been in Sydney and represents an intersection of immigrant and federation history which produces its uniqueness. The area in pre-colonial history was known to be a border area (specifically the area that is currently the Hawthorne Canal) between the Darug Nation and the Eora Nation.1 Haberfield in colonial history became one of the later plots of the Inner City to be developed on, thus exists the unique construction, laws and planning that has surrounded this small suburb. Real estate tycoon Richard Stanton owned the plot and designed the area to be 'slumless, laneless and publess’ suburb for Sydney’s burgeoning upper middle class. According to Susan Jackson-Stepowski, Haberfield was:
“Australia's first successful planned 'model suburb', embodying the then-evolving international garden suburb principles”2
It is one of the first federation blocks or garden suburb in the world which has garnered it a fervently defensive owners association and some of the most particular conservation laws in the country. To this day, not a single pub is situated in the suburb, there is not a single lane to speak of and there is an utterly specific distaste toward public housing. In the mid 20th century, a huge influx of Italian immigrants iterated on the ‘garden suburb’ reputation of the area and still has a sizeable Italian immigrant population alike its neighbours in Five Dock and Leichhardt.
After about two paragraphs of this condensed wikipedia-esque dialogue, you may be asking yourself why I’m talking about this history. It is because it deeply colours the current sentiments, landscape and culture of the area. Its cafes are usually housed in federation buildings, the price of these housing blocks are now in the multimillions due to the large plots, large houses and the distinctly upper middle class amenities and surrounds. Haberfield is a real estate agent’s wet dream, a personal gift slash blowjob from Richard Stanton to Ray White to sell low density housing to multimillionaires.
This suburb holds a special place in my heart as I lived here in my childhood and do currently. I have seen it change from its 2000s Italian kitsch of posters with touring Italian jazz singers whose ‘world tours’ seemingly only have stops in Five Dock, Leichhardt and Whittlesea. Its houses have been handed down from the second generation to the third, its Italian culture still present but it has also been (in some cases literally) forced to make room for the new, the hip, the happening. Currently on a Saturday morning; flash cars of the European variety, tourists from out of area flock into shops through guided tours and there are lines for any business reputable. This is the backdrop of which this series plays with. Haberfield’s cafes represent success stories, quirky marketing tactics, unhinged local drama and the last holdouts in a dying breed. Cafes come in many types from the strange and derelict gambling fronts, to slickly branded cafes with logos and merch and the cafes desperate to recreate that formula.
So let’s jump in, hop in a Fiat and grab an iced latte as we unpack how good cafes are and what they can mean to us.
Home Base: Garnish
I feel like a good place to start with this series is with home base, my local cafe. A local to me doesn’t represent the extremes of what a cafe can be, but it is where you most enjoy going. To me, Garnish Fine Foods is my home base.
Garnish Fine Foods is a cafe located just off the main intersection of Haberfield on Dalhousie Street. It sits in an old federation building which blends perfectly with its placement as the last business in the ‘shopping centre’ of Haberfield. Highlighted with green accents, its kitchen sits in the heart of what used to be a family home, waiters navigate tight doorways and amongst dedicated readers of the Sydney Morning Herald. White walls of double brick are adorned with the artwork of local artists, notices and community groups, and lain around are copies of the regular papers ubiquitous to Sydney cafes. Its dining areas are two living rooms and the courtyard out back, the business has a unique community feel.
The business has a tight-nit staff seemingly run by two extremely similar looking owners. The only way I can discern between them is the hat one of them usually wears. The food is the usual fair with a breakfast and lunch menu. Pancakes, eggs on toast, big breakfasts, burgers, so on and so on. Some of my favourite dishes include the baked eggs which is a suped up version of beans on toast with a mix of beans, chorizo, onion in a red sauce with sourdough bread and butter on the side to mop it all up. The Ricotta Pancakes are stacked in three with berries, a berry compote and ice cream and smothered in ricotta. Or you could go for something from the lunch specials board like the Halloumi Salad with fresh greens, onion, tomato and balsamic glaze. Between the menu and the heavily advertised specials, you will find something to your taste. It’s honest food, it’s very well priced, it’s vaguely Italian, and it’s delicious. Let me reiterate, it is very reasonably priced. As in I do not know how they can afford it, as in this seems to be a pro-bono project for the Haberfield commune.
I suggest a beverage on the side as well, get a coffee of your liking and perhaps a fresh pressed juice as well for a hangover from a house party you went to the night before (because lord knows you’ll need bread to neutralise the alcohol). Ask for the killer blend which is a specific extra strength blend which I usually take strong black which tastes and wakes you up like nothing else, trust me it does as advertised.
So the food’s great Hektor, thanks for the Haberfield history lesson, the diatribe on real estate and a couple paragraphs on a cafe you have already taken me to. Why start here? Why do I care so much about this cafe to describe it as home base? Well my (presumably) friend, Garnish means a lot to me because of the relationship the cafe has with its community and its utilisation as a third place. The people at Garnish know my younger brothers’ distinct toasted banana bread with no butter, chips and vanilla milkshake order like they’re in the fucking navy. When I go in solo depressingly listening to a Kitchen Nightmares episode on my AirPods, they ask where my mum is. People regularly meet here at all times of the day and Garnish feels like an organic part of the community, dripping with energy only a few Inner West cafes can cultivate and that is done through a symbiotic relationship with the community.
When I come to Garnish, I constantly think about the necessity of its existence to foster community and how atomised younger individuals can be when they’re focused on surviving in one of the most expensive cities in the world. If I worked I would need the killer blend and friendly “how’s your mum?” Injected into my veins in order to function. Your local is important, its important to engage with community, to have weird two minute chats with other residents about something happening up the street, to have awkward conversations with servers who know you because you go there too much. In effect, it is touching grass. Cafes in Sydney and Australia do serve that function as a place to be which is not home or work, it is unfortunately a prohibitively priced space ran by a business, but Garnish makes me think about how important those spaces are in a micro scale. Garnish represents Haberfield’s community, good and bad. It’s close knit-ness, its aversion to high density developments, its love of gardening. Regardless, it is still a part of it and for that it is my home base and somewhere I highly recommend you eat.
Next on the menu will be the the first in the tale of two rival cafes, Little West.
Coupe, S&R: Speed the Plough, page 9-19,128. Ashfield Municipal Council, 1988 ISBN 0-9595234-1-3
Jackson-Stepowski, Sue, Haberfield, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/haberfield, viewed 30 Mar 2024
fuego writing from Mr Vineburg and an apt and moving comment on the value of places like this in a city as expensive as Sydney.
shouts out garnish! even though there was no shouts out for me (the person that’s going to all these cafes with you)