The best shopping in Bondi

Off the beaten tracks of touristy Campbell Parade and upmarket Gould Street is the first gift and homewares store by the people behind Have You Met Miss Jones, Lucky Ocean Club, Mr Green Grass and Hello – four brands which operated as wholesale collections for ten years. Owner Jennifer Jones brought all four of her brands under one roof after ten years as a wholesale business, choosing Bondi because it’s where she calls home. “We looked at other locations but I kept saying to my husband ‘We don’t know the city!’ It’s a Bondi Bubble. A store is such an investment of yourself that I wanted to do that in my community.”

When a when brand-new activewear store pops up on Hall Street – a couple of hundred metres back from the beach and around the corner from the ultra trendy Gould Street – the yogis, runners and yummy mummys of Bondi flock to check it out. Inside the bright white store you’ll find plenty of functional and versatile leggings, crops, tees, shorts and tanks. The range uses a black-and-white palette of prints, from palm fronds and marbled surfaces to pansies and geometric patterns. Currently all products are made in Australia. The fabric chosen for most of the brand’s staple pieces has a high Lycra content, meaning it is lightweight and dries fast.

Kit and Ace is the sister company to Lululemon, but although it’s all about active wear, they’re making it with a luxurious twist: cashmere. To make things even easier though, the fabrics they’re using (yes, using the casha) are machine-washable, so you don’t even need to get elbow-deep in soapy suds to wash your wares. Along with their Gould Street store, they also have stores in Bondi Junction and Surry Hills. But if you’re hanging at Bondi and want to warm up in those salty climes, this is the store to hit up.

The back room of a convenience store would strike most people as an unwise location in which to open a business. But when Joelie Zhou saw the storage area at the back of Bondi Square Tobacconist, she decided it would be a perfect location for her tea shop. “In China, tea shops are usually hidden in secret, quiet places – like at the end of a street,” says Zhou, owner of Taishan Tea Club in Bondi Junction. “Tea shops are quiet places where people go to relax. They stay for the whole afternoon drinking tea and talking with friends.” She took over the space in June 2019, opening her shop-within-a-shop along the pedestrian strip of Oxford street mall where hundreds of people pass by daily en route to the train station. Most do not notice the tea shop, but for the ones that follow the green neon "tea and cake" sign in the window, there is the joy of discovering the unexpected, that wonderful feeling of curiosity having paid off. To reach it, you must first walk through the unremarkable, fluorescent-lit shop out front. Just beyond the usual rows of refrigerated soft drinks and snacks, a decorative wooden archway, quite out of place in your common-or-garden convenience store, draws you into another space. As you pass through, there is a perceptible change in the ambiance: the lighting softens, the noise of Oxford street fades behind you, and a long wooden table beckons.  For this is no ordinary tea shop. It’s more like a tea museum, filled with rare and collectible items, where you

If you’re struggling to get your kid off a screen, this is your shop. B. Amused have floor-to-ceiling shelves of games they say will entertain kids from 0-100. At the family-run business, staff are more than willing to find the right game for your family. You’ll find everything from Snap to various types of Rubik’s Cubes to a full range of the Orchard Toys board games for littlies. Go home with: StoryCubes, where the dice have pictures on them and you roll them to tell a story ($18.95) or Spot It! A snap-like game kids love ($24.95).

The Eastern outpost of Salt Meats Cheese is your one-stop-shop for its namesake with a delicatessen, retail store and small café. You'll find it in Harris Farm Market, Westfield and inside you find a huge range of prosciutto, salami, chorizo, mozzarella, ricotta, buratta and more. You can also order up cheese and charcuterie platters and cheese wheel towers for parties and functions.

There's a good range of Apple products are available at the brand's Bondi Junction store.

From Celtic salt and chia seeds to Inca berries and raw chocolate, the bulk-buy organic food store in Bondi Junction stocks natural ingredients at appealingly low prices. Online retailer Naked Foods Organic Health Foods owns the store and there are in-store nutritionists who can help shoppers choose clean eats. Plus, filling brown paper bags with scoops of dried mango makes it feel like you’re shopping in a fresh, healthy lolly shop.

Get all dressed up in frocks from the 1950s, flares from the swinging sixties and super trendy smocks from the ’70s. You can find outfits from all the ages at Sydney’s best vintage shops, and the homewares to match at Sydney’s best antiques shops.