Pasham Cafe

Pasham Cafe works out of the arcade at 41-43 Princes Highway, Dapto, cooking Turkish flatbread and pastries fresh through the morning trade. Hours run 7am to 2:30pm weekdays and 7am to noon Saturdays, closed Sundays. Dogs are welcome at the outdoor arcade and footpath tables, which turns a coffee-and-gozleme run into a proper stop for Illawarra dog walkers.

The dog setup

Dogs join you at the designated outdoor tables in the arcade and out the footpath side, staying on lead and close to your chair. Indoors and the counter line are off limits under NSW food-safety rules, so the outdoor footprint is the whole deal. There is no dog menu, and while staff are happy to top up a water bowl on request, bring your own portable one. The arcade setting keeps things calm compared with a highway frontage, which suits young or easily distracted dogs.

Worth knowing

The kitchen is the reason to come. Gozleme is cooked fresh with savoury fillings, burek comes out of the oven daily in flaky layers, and a rotating case of Turkish sweets and in-house bakes covers the treats. The coffee is single origin, pulled by a barista with more than two decades behind the machine. The Saturday midday close means weekend visitors should aim for the morning; weekday lunch is the busiest window, so arriving before 12:15 beats the rush.

Getting there and parking

The cafe is at Shop 6, 41-43 Princes Highway, Dapto, inside the arcade near House2Home, in Wollongong's southern suburbs. Parking sits in the surrounding retail lots with easy on-lead access to the arcade entrance, and Dapto station is walkable for train arrivals. The flat shopping-precinct approach suits older dogs.

Close by with the dogs

The Reed Park fenced dog park at Horsley is minutes away for an off-leash run either side of breakfast, and Passionate Palate at Kanahooka makes a second stop along the lake side. Heading south, Hive Coffee Co covers the Albion Park run.

More options are on the NSW dog friendly cafes guide and the Dapto destination page.

Pepsi: fresh gozleme at the arcade table, then zoomies at Reed Park at Horsley.