Hot List Update: Beating the Queues at Olympic Meats

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This week’s Hot List activity

• Added: Olympic Meats
• Most trending restaurant: Kiln
• Most trending bar: Letra House
• Most trending cafe: Cafe Cressida

If you want your meat, you’ve got a crowd to beat

“We sold out on Saturday and Sunday; we were just slammed in such a good way,” Olympic Meats’ manager, known as KC, told me as she and the crew prepared for the crowds to come flooding in. “We weren’t expecting such a good reception – it was insane.”

Olympic Meats is the hottest restaurant in Marrickville right now. And that’s not just because of the open kitchen’s charcoal grill, where gyrating rods of lamb, pork and chicken spend the day transforming into some of Sydney’s most exciting new Greek food. It’s also because it has sold out of everything every night since opening last weekend.

When most of your food takes all day to cook, once it’s gone, it’s gone. You have to guess how much you’ll sell that day because you can’t magic up a lamb kontosouvli that’s been spit roasting for six hours. But demand for superb Greek meat has exceeded Olympic Meats’ wildest expectations.

“Saturday I think we held out until 8.30,” KC says. “Sunday we doubled our portions and we still sold out within like three hours – we had heaps of big groups and families who came in and they just wanted all the meats, all the platters, everything.”

“I recommend getting here as early as you can.”

So I did. I left work early yesterday so I could arrive at Olympic Meats just before it opened at 5pm. But no fuel in the car and Dulwich Hill Station’s metro conversion meant that I had to power walk from Sydenham Station.

Puffing down Marrickville Road, the Greek community’s influence on Marrickville is clear. Zorbas Travel Service, Souvlaki Boys, Gyradiko Marrickville, Omonia Coffee Lounge and Hellenic Patisserie were just a few of the shops I saw. Maybe Olympic Meats’ daily sellouts aren’t surprising. Give the suburb that’s home to Sydney’s Little Greece a new Greek restaurant worth getting excited about, and the area will get excited about it.

I arrived at 10 past five, as tables were filling up and the takeaway queue was getting started. I sat down and ordered a pita filled with a politiko kebab (a mix of beef and lamb mince), the beef tallow chips our story called a challenger for Sydney’s best chip (I now agree), and a small plate of lamb souvlaki. Wow. Just wow. I get the queues. I understand why this is happening.

At 5.22pm the restaurant had six open tables left.

At 5.31pm a couple showed up, scanned the dining room and takeaway line, then turned around and walked away.

“It’s busy already,” laughed a lady incredulously as she took a seat at her friend’s table. This was at 5.40pm.

By 6pm every table was full. In the kitchen, chefs working the hot grill were taking big gulps from Stanley cups. In the corner a group of friends ploughed through Greek beers, determined to make the most of the BYO policy. A guy stained his white Armani polo shirt with a big glob of sauce, tried to sponge out with his napkin and only made a bigger mess of it – eventually he gave up and refocused on demolishing his pita wrap. And the couple from earlier came back – this time with two friends – and managed to get a table. This is the democracy of the walk-in only system. You can always try again later.

The takeaway queue stretched from the counter to the point where the footpath meets the road, but it’s worth noting that everything came out quickly. Everyone was happy and no one spent a lot of time waiting. Olympic Meats doesn’t have a long queue because of its wait times. It has a long queue because heaps of people want to eat there.

I’d been there for just over an hour and it was heaving. It was time for me to go and let some other people enjoy my table. I got bougatsa me krema – house-stretched filo pastry with custard and cinnamon – to take away for dessert, got the rest of my beef tallow chips boxed to go, and walked back to the station, much more slowly this time.

Olympic Meats will surely become less hectic as time goes by, but if you want to try it now, I suggest getting there between 5pm and 7pm. Your chances at getting a table will be higher than you think – and I saw plenty of people get seated quickly.

Broadsheet’s features editor Dan Cunningham told me he was going to Olympic the same night as me, but much later on. This morning I asked him how his meal was. He said they were sold out by the time he got there.

broadsheet.com.au/hotlist/sydney

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