Leaf Cafe & Co(Rhodes)

Leaf Cafe & Co is part of a small Sydney cafe group, and the Rhodes store occupies a shopfront on Marquet Street in the middle of the suburb's apartment-and-waterfront grid. It runs long hours by cafe standards - 7am to 4pm on weekdays - which makes it as much an afternoon laptop-and-coffee stop as a breakfast destination.

Dogs are welcome in the outdoor seating area at the Rhodes store, with dog bowls and puppuccinos reported for canine customers, per the group's own site and the Google listing. The outdoor tables front the shopping strip, so it is an easy stop mid-walk rather than a destination you need to plan around, and the puppuccino habit tells you staff expect dogs rather than merely tolerate them.

The vibe

The menu goes beyond standard cafe fare - gnocchi and crab pasta appear alongside the breakfast staples, and the coffee program (latte art, cold brew) gets repeat praise. QR ordering keeps the table turnover quick, which suits the lunchtime apartment crowd, and the shopfront's position means you can watch the strip go by while you eat. For dog owners the practical upside is the group's consistency: if you like the setup here, the same formula runs at their other stores, so the water-bowl-and-puppuccino treatment is not a one-off.

Close by with the dogs

Rhodes is compact, and the foreshore parks are the reason dog owners end up here. McIlwaine Park Off-leash Park is the big riverside stretch for an off-lead run, and Bare Witness and Left of Field round out the suburb's dog-friendly cafe shortlist. Parking is in the Marquet Street retail car parks; more in the Rhodes destination guide and the NSW dog-friendly cafes list.