Centro Oakleigh

Centro is smack dab in the heart of Oakleigh which is predominantly a Greek district. The food shopping offering reflects this well. Apart from quite a few great food shops including a bakery, deli, fruit and veg, a few takeaways you also have two supermarkets in the complex. Woolworths and Coles. Personally I prefer Coles. There’s more on offer and more varieties of everything. I’m bad at comparing prices so can’t tell you which is better in that respect but Coles does seem more popular generally.
There a good parking garage under the centre although sometimes, like on weekends it seems quite dimly lite (saving money??) which makes it feel a little unsafe. But maybe that’s just me.
Also a very easy walk from Oakleigh railway station.
It does get busy here on a Saturday morning. If you have time it’s also worth stepping out of The centre into Portman street. You’ll find heaps of butchers and fishmongers and plenty of other things to keep you occupied.

Shopping centres by and large are a necessary evil that over the years we attend because ‘one does don’t you know!’. Cenro Oakleigh fits that bill nicely but I have also come to appreciate the smaller local businesses that have called Centro home for the many years I have worked along-​side it. Coles Woolies and the ubiquitous hot bread offerings are there… because, but it is the clothes shops, eateries and bargains galore centres that dominate in a suburb that has placed a premium on BLING combined with cost minimisation.
Centro is also a cosmopolitan nirvana where scores of characters stir their coffees while issuing vocal cues that require hands gestures to punctuate every line. It is a Black and White portrait photographers daydream as the individuals inhabiting the centre show their ethnic and social history on their faces. This is also a mature gathering that know their coffee and food, and expect it to be just so. The establishments that inhabit this centre and indeed the surrounds offer some of the best brews and cakes in the state because of it. To do less is to invite instant closure as droves of customers abandon ship for sunnier climes of which there are numerous iterations.