Secret spices, fantastic falafels and crispy chicken: Foodie paradise on new metro line

Come hungry, they said. So I do, but even an empty stomach is no match for the vast array of food options available as I eat my way along the eagerly awaited final stage of Sydney’s metro line.

When the metro opened in 2024, then-transport minister Jo Haylen and I did a bar hop from North Sydney to the CBD to experience just how transformational it would be for the city. This time, it’s a food safari along the metro’s final stage linking Bankstown and Sydenham.

Haylen’s successor, Transport and Arts Minister John Graham, joins me. Not to play favourites, but this metro food crawl may well trump my wine tour.

The first stop on my pilgrimage from the south-west to the inner west is Punchbowl, home to what must be Sydney’s best Lebanese food. I peak too early.

We meet Bankstown MP Jihad Dib at the spruced-up metro station. Once run-down, poorly lit and a magnet for teenagers from the nearby boys’ school wanting to sneak a ciggie, Punchbowl station has been significantly renovated for the Southwest metro.

But that is the least interesting part of Punchbowl’s metro tale. The station is surrounded by restaurants, cakes shops, spice merchants and grocers. It is a foodie’s paradise.

Dib, a former principal of the boys’ school, knows everyone and greets business owners in Arabic before ushering me into their shops.

We are on The Boulevarde, the main strip which runs alongside the train tracks. Dib takes me into Sydney Spices, run by Ahmad and Mohmad Aouf.

Dib insists I try their BBQ meat spice, made from 17 secret herbs and spices and apparently perfect on lamb. Ahmad reveals four ingredients in his mix, but is tight-lipped about the others.

We drop into Bake’d, an Instagrammable bakery famous for its viral four-layered pancake stacks covered with everything from fairy floss to Oreos and Biscoff sauce. A young girl is being treated to the Pink Barbie, smothered in white chocolate sauce and sprinkles.

I get a sugar rush just looking at it.

But the place Dib is eager for us to try is Al Yasmin, a family-run Lebanese restaurant well known for its breakfasts (be prepared to queue, Dib tells me) as well as its generous servings. He is not kidding. Ahmad, a young Syrian refugee, insists on bringing us dish after dish.

The falafel is like nothing I have tried. The hummus is divine. The pickled vegetables? To die for. Dib is a tabouli connoisseur. “This is good,” he tells me. “Not as good as my mum’s, but no one’s is.”

Ahmad keeps delivering food and I keep eating until Dib’s minders point out we have other places to try along the 13.5-kilometre line. I roll out.

“The metro is so important for Punchbowl,” Dib says. “We are going to become a destination for people all over Sydney because it will just be so easy to get here. Jump on the metro, no parking – it will be amazing for us.”

Next we board the metro bound for Campsie, four stops away. Charcoal chicken and honey cakes are on our must-try list, I am told. This time it’s the MP for Canterbury Sophie Cotsis who wants to show off the hotspots in her suburb, which has been keenly anticipating the opening of the metro.

Campsie Charcoal Chickens is an institution, but it has found the past two years tough. The infamous pink buses, which replaced trains between Bankstown and Sydenham while the line was converted for the metro, stop right outside the shop.

Throngs of passengers have swamped the entrance, making business difficult, but Chris Conti, the manager, is convinced the new metro will only be a good thing for his establishment. Cotsis, meanwhile, tells me I will never taste a better hot chip, and she orders up big.

She may well be right. I can barely move but I keep eating. We still have cakes to go. Send help.

Christina’s Honey Cakes, like the chicken shop, is a beloved Campsie establishment. An assortment of Christina’s traditional layered cakes is packaged for me to take away. A relief, given we still have Vietnamese in Marrickville to go.

Back on the metro for another four stops where Haylen, my one-time wine partner, has swapped prosecco for sticky rice and chicken. She meets us at Marrickville station to take us to VN Street Food on Illawarra Road. Its viral dish is Hanoi-style cha cuon, which is pork and steamed rice rolls.

By this stage of my journey, I am beyond full and Graham’s staffer reminds me I didn’t even make it to Bankstown for banh mi. I definitely did not have a pork roll in me. Next time.

And that is the beauty of the Southwest metro. Sydney’s rich multicultural suburbs are now much more connected. The 130-year-old Bankstown line has been transformed into a driverless metro network that not only slices travel times but means a lunchtime banh mi or an afternoon cinnamon tea is now only a quick train trip away.

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