The Golden Age Of Suburban Shopping: Griffith Shops

Posted on 13 August, 2020

Canberra’s planners had strong ideas about the importance of small suburban shops anchoring each suburb and providing a community hub as well as a place to purchase essentials.

Over the decades the fortunes of these commercial strips have often waxed and waned.

But these days, Canberra has a strong contingent of suburban shops—not only servicing their own streets, but attracting crowds from all over the city for their quirky mix of convenience stores, eateries and odd shops. We bring you five of the finest.

Griffith Shops

Canberra’s serious foodies gravitate to this old and genteel strip of shops, which cram an awful lot of good eating into a relatively short avenue.

For starters, Canberra’s most lauded restaurant Aubergine takes out an elegant corner position at one end, while fine-dining stalwart Rubicon anchors the main thoroughfare.

There’s also the Griffith Vietnamese which is famous in Parliament House for cheap and fresh food with flair—perfect for a sitting week when you simply must get out of the building, and Gryphons if you want to tuck yourself away and enjoy an after-work drink.

But there are also those who come to buy ingredients to take home. The Griffith Butcher is a favourite haunt of the city’s carnivores, while the vego/vegan crowd gather at Organic Energy for their fruit and vege before popping into Mountain Creek Wholefoods
for all manner of nutritional boosts.

The Shop-Rite supermarket provides a competitive selection of anything else you might need.

WANT MORE LOCAL GOODNESS? THERE’S MORE TO THIS SERIES 

• Ainslie Shops
• Cook Shops
• Deakin Shops

PHOTOGRAPHY Tim Bean