Poppi and Faye Alexandridis

If you walked past the corner of Elizabeth Bay and Ithaca Roads of a late afternoon and didn’t know any better, you could be forgiven for completely missing the site of Poppi’s Place café. An inconspicuous hole-in-the-wall, it’s easy to “blink and miss” this spot. But stroll by on a weekday morning and it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary pocket, thronged with people grabbing a coffee, a bite to eat, and enjoying a friendly chat at what is a much-loved local institution.

Tiny and cosy though it may be, this Elizabeth Bay café punches well above its weight, regarded as one of the true icons of the area, its outdoor tables a passing parade of locals and visitors alike. Harking back to an earlier time in the neighbourhood, Poppi’s Place is a family-run haven of community and connection, overseen by the eponymous Poppi Alexandridis and her effervescent daughter, Faye.

Moving from Greece to Australia in the 1970s, the family first opened on the sunny Elizabeth Bay corner as a deli and small-goods providore in the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, they shifted next door, opening the current café site while retaining a home-made meal service from a shop two doors around the corner. With Poppi and Faye at the helm, the business is the stuff of local legend, with very humble beginnings.

“My husband used to deliver bread to the old owner of the deli that was here,” Poppi says on a bright Tuesday afternoon. “And then we were looking for a new business, and we got the opportunity to take over.

“We bought it as a deli and sold everything as a general grocery store, but the old owner didn’t make sandwiches and workers and locals kept coming in and asking for them, so we started making them. Then we put a coffee machine in and things got really busy and popular. We had two cashiers working and the line was out the door.”

Poppi says that in that era, Elizabeth Bay and Potts Point were very different, with only a handful of cafés and no major multi-national grocery-store presence.

“It was so much different then,” she says. “This shop was number one. Back then there weren’t many cafés and no Woolworths or anything like that. Big difference now. There are cafés everywhere and lots of supermarkets.”

With a clientele that once included the likes of the Murdoch family and Kerry Packer, along with many resident musicians and artists, Poppi’s Place became a sanctuary for locals to catch up and connect, the area’s eclectic community embracing its homespun vibes. While the neighbourhood has changed, that sense of connection remains integral to the café’s status as an institution.

“It’s always been a very good community here,” Poppi says. “Business is a bit slower now than before, but I’m so happy here – everybody knows me and I love that. People say to me, ‘What tablets do you take to make you so happy?’ I say no, I’m just born like that. I don’t pretend. If I want to cry, I try to laugh instead.”

A key component of the business’s connection to the area is the home-cooked meal service they offer, distinct from the café itself. Every night, with the assistance of a chef and a menu supervised by Poppi and Faye, they prepare home-made meals at affordable prices – a service beloved by the local community.

“We do the home-cooked meals with a chef, and they’re very good for older people around the area,” she says. “It’s good homemade food, a little bit Italian, a little bit Greek, and the local people love it, with a whole lot of regular weekly customers.”

When asked whether she has ever considered retirement, Poppi looks askance, the legendary work ethic of Greek immigrants to Australia coming to the fore.

“I can’t do that!” she says. “I am used to working seven days a week and then one day my daughter says I have to take a day off. So we started taking Sundays off and then I couldn’t even handle having one day off. And I thought, ‘How can I retire and stay away forever if I can’t even handle one day off?’ I belong here. I don’t know anything else. It’s my home.”

And that is why there is little doubt Poppi’s Place remains such a cherished operation. From hungry tradies working on nearby building projects such as the new Billyard development, to solicitors, students, surgeons, and passing strangers, the sense of belonging and connection is strong – and deeply appreciated.

By Adam Gibson 

Photos by Simone McAullay