The Hawthorn East & Camberwell Junction Guide: Where to Eat, Drink, Shop & Explore
- Jesse Hayes
- Aug 15
- 12 min read
Updated: Aug 17
There are parts of Melbourne that announce themselves. They have the landmark. The famous street. The restaurant everyone suddenly needs to book. The carefully manufactured identity that tells you exactly why you're supposed to visit. Then there are places that simply work. And what kind of Founder and pillar of the local business and hospitality economy would I be If I didn't even show you around my 2nd home?
Sitting in Melbourne's inner east, roughly where Burke Road, Camberwell Road and Riversdale Road collide, Camberwell Junction has spent generations developing into something increasingly rare: a genuinely mixed neighbourhood centre.
You can buy groceries here, find an excellent coffee, disappear into a wine bar, hunt through vintage clothes, have dinner, see a film in one of Melbourne's great Art Deco cinemas, work for the day, catch a train home and come back on Sunday morning to rummage through hundreds of market stalls.
And while everyone calls it Camberwell Junction, geography makes the area slightly more interesting. Cross a road and you can find yourself in Hawthorn East.
The two neighbourhoods effectively meet around the Junction, with some of the area's most recognisable destinations technically sitting on the Hawthorn East side of the border.
That makes the best way to explore the area not by worrying too much about suburb boundaries, but by treating Hawthorn East and Camberwell Junction as one interconnected lifestyle precinct.
So, whether you're a local who has stopped noticing what's around you, someone considering moving to Melbourne's inner east, or simply looking for somewhere different to spend a Saturday, here's where to start.
First, Get Your Bearings: Camberwell Junction
The clue is in the name. Camberwell Junction is formed around the meeting of Burke Road, Camberwell Road and Riversdale Road, creating one of Melbourne's more distinctive suburban intersections. But the Junction itself is really just the centre point.
The wider precinct stretches along Burke Road and spills into the surrounding streets, laneways and commercial pockets of both Camberwell and Hawthorn East.
Unlike a shopping centre, there's no obvious front door. That's part of its appeal. There are hundreds of shops and businesses distributed throughout the precinct, from major retailers and supermarkets to restaurants, professional services, independent boutiques, bakeries, bars and businesses that have occupied the area for decades.
Camberwell Station sits a short walk north of the Junction, while tram routes running through Burke Road, Riversdale Road and Camberwell Road make the precinct unusually well connected for suburban Melbourne.
But once you're here, the best way to experience it is on foot.
Camberwell Junction rewards wandering.
Coffee & Breakfast Around Camberwell Junction
It would be impossible to write a guide to Melbourne's inner east without beginning with coffee. Fortunately, Camberwell takes the subject seriously.
The concentration of cafés around the Junction means you can approach breakfast with almost unnecessary levels of precision.
Want something polished?
Easy.
Something tiny and local?
Simple.
Coffee and a pastry before jumping on the train?
Naturally.
A two-hour brunch that renders lunch completely unnecessary? This is Melbourne. Of course you can!
Hidden close to Camberwell Station on Cookson Street, Collective Espresso has become one of the area's established coffee stops. It's compact, contemporary and particularly useful if you're arriving by train and want to begin exploring from the northern end of the precinct. This is the kind of café that works equally well for a quick coffee or a proper sit-down breakfast before heading towards Burke Road.
Tucked behind Burke Road, My Other Brother has long been part of Camberwell's specialty-coffee landscape. Its slightly concealed position is also very Camberwell Junction. Some of the precinct's best places aren't necessarily sitting prominently on the main road. They're behind buildings, down laneways, upstairs or around corners. Finding them is half the fun.
Over on Camberwell Road in Hawthorn East, Light Years provides a useful reminder that the lifestyle of Camberwell Junction doesn't stop neatly at the suburb boundary. Coffee, breakfast and brunch make it an easy starting point if you're approaching the Junction from Hawthorn East. And this side of the precinct is worth exploring in its own right.
Bakeries, Bread & Something Sweet
If Melbourne has developed an unhealthy obsession with excellent bread, Camberwell Junction is doing nothing to discourage it.
Woodfrog Bakery has built a serious following around its bread, sourdough and pastries.
If you're visiting the Sunday Market, stopping for bread somewhere around Burke Road feels almost compulsory. Buy something for later.
Whether it actually survives until later is another matter.
A Melbourne institution rather than a neighbourhood secret, Laurent provides the reliable combination of coffee, cakes, pastries and bread that makes it an easy stop while moving along Burke Road. The great advantage of the Junction is that these places aren't isolated destinations. Coffee becomes shopping. Shopping becomes lunch. Lunch becomes wandering. And suddenly you've been here for four hours.
Shopping in Camberwell Junction
This is where Camberwell Junction distinguishes itself from many suburban activity centres. It isn't entirely dependent on one shopping centre. Retail stretches along the street. There are national brands, independents, specialty stores, homewares, fashion, beauty, books and food retailers spread across the wider precinct. That creates something increasingly valuable in Melbourne:
a shopping district you can actually explore.
Burke Road
Burke Road forms the retail spine of Camberwell Junction. You'll find familiar names here, but the appeal is the mixture rather than any individual retailer.
Fashion sits alongside beauty.
Homewares beside cafés.
Books beside bakeries.
Supermarkets beside small independents.
The result feels less like entering a retail complex and more like moving through a neighbourhood.
If you do want the convenience of larger-format retail, the Junction also has it.
Camberwell Place and Camberwell Central bring together supermarkets, major retailers and everyday services within the broader street-based precinct. That combination is important. Camberwell Junction isn't interesting because it rejects convenience. It's interesting because convenience exists alongside smaller-scale street life.
Then there's the food market. The Camberwell Fresh Food Market has been part of the area for generations and remains one of the Junction's anchors. This isn't a novelty market designed exclusively for weekend tourism.
It's where people actually shop. Fresh produce, seafood, meat, delicatessen products, flowers and specialty food retailers make it the kind of place where going in for one thing can become an expensive exercise in enthusiasm.
There is something reassuring about neighbourhoods that still have proper fresh food markets. They give a precinct rhythm.
People aren't only visiting for entertainment.
They're living here.
And that distinction matters.
Sunday changes the personality of the Junction. The car park near Station Street becomes home to the Rotary Camberwell Sunday Market, one of Melbourne's best-known destinations for second-hand goods, vintage finds, collectibles, clothing, books, records, homewares and the occasional object whose original purpose may remain a mystery.
The market has operated since the 1970s and has become part of Camberwell's identity.
This isn't really a place for efficient shopping.
It's treasure hunting. There is a difference.
Come looking for one specific thing and you probably won't find it. Come looking for absolutely nothing and you'll leave carrying something inexplicable.
That's how markets are supposed to work.
The ideal Sunday morning?
Start with coffee.
Walk the market.
Buy something you didn't need.
Get breakfast.
Walk Burke Road.
Pick up something from the Fresh Food Market.
Then congratulate yourself on having completed an extraordinarily productive morning despite achieving almost nothing you originally planned.
Where to Eat in Camberwell & Hawthorn East
The dining scene around Camberwell Junction is broader than it initially appears. Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and modern Australian dining are scattered throughout the precinct, with many of the most interesting options sitting around Camberwell Road, Burke Road and the smaller streets connecting them.
Italy 1 has long been one of the area's established Italian names. It's the sort of restaurant that fits naturally into Camberwell: polished enough for an occasion without needing to turn dinner into theatre.
Across from the Rivoli, Fiorelli is almost perfectly positioned for dinner and a film.
Italian food followed by an Art Deco cinema is difficult to argue with. It also demonstrates one of the area's strongest qualities: you can build an entire evening within a few hundred metres.
For dumplings, Tao Dumplings has long been one of those places that appears repeatedly in conversations about eating around Camberwell. Unpretentious and extremely popular, it's representative of another side of the precinct: good neighbourhood restaurants that people return to rather than merely visit once.
Wine Bars, Cocktails & Camberwell After Dark
For a suburb historically associated more with respectable Sunday mornings than questionable Saturday nights, Camberwell has developed a surprisingly good collection of places to drink.
And several of the best are hidden.
Which seems appropriate.
Downstairs on Auburn Parade, Bar None is one of Camberwell's best-known cocktail bars.
It's intimate, concealed and almost aggressively uninterested in looking like a conventional suburban bar from the street.
Exactly as it should be.
Head upstairs instead and you'll find East of Everything, with craft beer, food and a completely different personality.
The vertical arrangement of venues around Auburn Parade is one of those little quirks that makes the area more interesting than a quick drive along Burke Road might suggest.
On Camberwell Road, East End Wine Bar brings another layer to the Junction's evening economy. It's relaxed, neighbourhood-focused and suited to the sort of evening that begins with "one glass" and encounters some scheduling difficulties thereafter.
Nearby, Young's Wine Rooms continues the theme. Together these venues have helped give Camberwell Road a much more convincing evening identity. Camberwell Junction is still not Chapel Street. Nor should it try to be. Its nightlife works precisely because it feels local.
If Camberwell Junction has a visual icon, this is probably it. Rivoli Cinemas, at 200 Camberwell Road, opened in 1940 and remains one of Melbourne's great surviving Art Deco cinemas.
Even if you're not particularly interested in architecture, it's difficult not to appreciate a cinema that still makes going to see a film feel like an occasion.
The building's sweeping curves, dramatic interiors and unmistakable façade belong to an era when cinemas weren't designed to disappear anonymously into shopping centres.
They were destinations.
And the Rivoli still is.
Dinner.
Drinks.
Film.
No Uber between them.
Excellent urban planning.
Architecture, Streets & The Pleasure of Wandering
One of the easiest things to overlook about Hawthorn East and Camberwell is the streets themselves. Move away from the commercial roads and the urban texture changes quickly.
Victorian and Edwardian homes, Federation architecture, mature trees and quiet residential streets sit remarkably close to the intensity of Burke Road and Camberwell Junction.
That contrast is part of the area's appeal.
You can move from a six-way intersection full of trams, traffic and shops into a leafy residential street within minutes. The Junction therefore works well without an itinerary.
Walk.
Turn down the street that looks interesting.
Find another café.
Look at houses you cannot afford.
Continue.
It's a perfectly respectable Melbourne afternoon.
Green Space Around Hawthorn East
If you've eaten too much — which this guide is doing very little to prevent — Hawthorn East also provides plenty of opportunities to walk it off.
Anderson Park is one of the area's better-known green spaces, sitting on elevated ground and offering views back towards Melbourne.
The broader area is also connected to numerous smaller parks, reserves and recreational spaces.
That's another reason the precinct works as a place to spend an entire day rather than simply visit a restaurant.
Urban amenity isn't just what happens inside buildings. The spaces between them matter just as much.
Working from Hawthorn East & Camberwell Junction
The evolution of Camberwell Junction hasn't only been about eating, drinking and shopping.
The area is also a significant commercial centre.
Hundreds of businesses operate throughout the precinct, and Hawthorn East itself contains substantial office and commercial activity.
That has increasingly blurred the old distinction between the suburb as somewhere you live and the city as somewhere you work.
Flexible working accelerated that shift.
People began asking a different question.
If work no longer requires travelling into a traditional CBD office every day, what should a workplace actually provide?
That question produced some interesting experiments. One of them was Eclat.
ECLAT and a Different Idea of the Workplace
Located at 141 Camberwell Rd, Hawthorn East, close to Camberwell Junction, ECLAT was conceived around a different interpretation of coworking.
Rather than treating flexible workspace simply as desks, meeting rooms and shared infrastructure, the concept approached work through the lens of hospitality, lifestyle and membership.
Private offices sat alongside shared spaces and hospitality-focused amenities, attempting to create something closer to a private members' environment than a conventional serviced office.
International design publication:
Wallpaper described Eclat as a hospitality-infused workspace where culture, lifestyle and business converge.
But the completed building was only one chapter of a much longer story. The concept behind ECLAT began years before the doors opened. Created by Jesse Hayes through early business plans, rejected pitches, changing ideas about coworking and a belief that workplaces would increasingly need to compete with the comfort, flexibility and experience of working elsewhere.
I know that story particularly well.
I founded it!
A Precinct Built Around More Than One Purpose
And perhaps that's the most interesting thing about Hawthorn East and Camberwell Junction.
No single attraction defines it.
The Rivoli isn't enough.
The Sunday Market isn't enough.
Burke Road isn't enough.
The restaurants aren't enough.
The cafés aren't enough.
What makes the area work is the accumulation of all of them. It's the ability to buy groceries, work, have lunch, browse shops, meet someone for a drink, see a film and get home without the day feeling like a logistics exercise.
Modern cities spend enormous amounts of time talking about mixed-use precincts, walkability, amenity and the 15-minute city.
Camberwell Junction has been quietly practising a version of that model for generations.
Not perfectly.
Not deliberately.
And certainly not with enough parking to keep everyone happy. But successfully enough that the Junction remains one of Melbourne's most enduring suburban centres.
The Perfect Day in Camberwell Junction
If you're visiting for the first time, don't overcomplicate it.
9:00am — Coffee
Start around Camberwell Station with coffee and breakfast.
10:00am — Explore Burke Road
Walk south through the shops towards the Junction. Don't rush. The smaller stores and side streets are part of the experience.
11:30am — Fresh Food Market
Wander through the Camberwell Fresh Food Market and buy something for later.
12:30pm — Lunch
Choose somewhere around Burke Road or Camberwell Road. You have options.
2:00pm — Keep Walking
Cross into Hawthorn East.
Explore the residential streets, grab another coffee or head towards one of the local parks.
4:00pm — Rivoli
Catch an afternoon film at Rivoli Cinemas.
Or skip the film and head upstairs.
We don't judge.
6:30pm — Dinner
Italian, Asian or something casual around Camberwell Road.
8:30pm — Drinks
Finish with wine or cocktails somewhere around the Junction.
And if it's Sunday?
Move everything back several hours and start at the Camberwell Sunday Market.
Getting to Camberwell Junction
One of the great advantages of the area is that you don't necessarily need a car. Camberwell Station provides train access close to the shopping precinct, while tram routes travel through the Junction along Burke Road, Riversdale Road and Camberwell Road.
The combination makes Camberwell Junction unusually accessible from multiple parts of Melbourne's inner and eastern suburbs.
Once you arrive, most of the destinations in this guide are best explored on foot.
Hawthorn East & Camberwell Junction: More Than a Shopping Strip
Melbourne is full of great streets. What it has fewer of are genuinely complete neighbourhood centres. Places where commerce, hospitality, entertainment, work and everyday life overlap naturally.
That's what makes Camberwell Junction and Hawthorn East worth exploring.
Come for the Sunday Market.
Come for the Rivoli.
Come for dinner.
Come for coffee.
Come to shop.
Come to work.
Come because you've lived ten minutes away for fifteen years and somehow never actually stopped to look around.
It doesn't really matter.
The best neighbourhoods aren't defined by one reason to visit. They're defined by how easily one reason becomes five. And around Camberwell Junction, it usually does.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Camberwell Junction known for?
Camberwell Junction is one of Melbourne's major inner-eastern shopping and lifestyle precincts. It is particularly known for the Burke Road shopping strip, Camberwell Sunday Market, Camberwell Fresh Food Market, restaurants, cafés and the historic Rivoli Cinemas.
Is Camberwell Junction in Camberwell or Hawthorn East?
The commercial precinct extends across the Camberwell and Hawthorn East area. Much of the Burke Road shopping strip is in Camberwell, while a number of prominent destinations around Camberwell Road are located on the Hawthorn East side of the precinct.
What are the best things to do in Camberwell?
Popular things to do include exploring the Camberwell Sunday Market, shopping along Burke Road, visiting the Camberwell Fresh Food Market, seeing a film at Rivoli Cinemas, visiting local cafés and restaurants, and exploring the surrounding streets and parks.
Is Camberwell Junction good for restaurants and cafés?
Yes. Camberwell Junction and neighbouring Hawthorn East have a substantial concentration of cafés, restaurants, bakeries, wine bars and casual dining venues across Burke Road, Camberwell Road and surrounding streets.
What is there to do in Hawthorn East?
Hawthorn East combines cafés, restaurants, parks and residential streets with easy access to Camberwell Junction. Rivoli Cinemas, Light Years and the Camberwell Road dining and entertainment precinct are among the area's better-known destinations.
Where is ECLAT in Melbourne?
Eclat is located at 141 Camberwell rd Hawthorn East, near Camberwell Junction. The workspace combined private offices and flexible working with hospitality and lifestyle-focused amenities. New Melbourne CBD ECLAT Coworking spaces are coming soon!
What is ECLAT coworking?
ECLAT was conceived by Founder Jesse Hayes as a hospitality-led members' workspace rather than a conventional coworking office. Its development formed part of a broader shift towards flexible, experience-focused workplaces in Melbourne.
