I had the prefect route planned for the first day of the Melbourne Pastry Tour. Catch the train to Williamstown sample a few patisseries and then catch the punt across the river, ride along the shore and visit a few more in Port Melbourne and South Melbourne. I still reckon it is a good route so you might like to get it from Strava from this link.

But who knew? The punt doesn’t operate on weekdays between 9am and 4pm. So I had to rustle up a new route pretty quickly. A pleasant punt ride and foreshore was replaced with hard core industrial Melbourne, which is pretty interesting in its own right. The route we ended up taken is also available from Strava on this link.

A total of five patisseries were visited.

Williamstown Pastry Bar – this place was old school traditional bakery clearly satisfying a local need. We sampled a Danish and Almond Croissant. They were very well executed and enjoyable but they didn’t have that something extra special. Based on the cabinets, I suspect they do a brisk trade with pies and pasties.

Motte Bakery – this a very functional kitchen located on the in a semi-industrial/commercial area adjacent to a residential area. Customer and customer spaces are a secondary consideration to the art of baking in the kitchen that dominates. I appreciate and commend their focus – it also looks like a genuinely food place to work. We went savoury with a vegemite and cheese scroll and a cream cheese and jalepeno danish. This was the pick of the day and I will definitely return!

Brûlée Patisserie – is best described as a French style cafe. There was a large range of options for lunch and a good pastry selection. Unfortunately, my lunch time crepe was not sufficiently warm to be very enjoyable. This was followed up by a pistachio croissant which somewhat redeemed Brûlée, but not enough to place it in the outstanding category. We did discover a pretty good food provider across the road, which is worth visiting – the Fruiterer’s Wife

Kudo – Artisan Bakery – describes itself as being about time honoured techniques, a celebration of the craft of baking and its origins. Local flours, indigenous grains, and the rituals of ancient bread-making. Unfortunately, we arrived after the lunch rush and there really wasn’t anything to try other than a chilli chocolate madeleine. So that’s what I tried – an unfortunately it wasn’t a great example. Their website sounds like they are very dedicated – so perhaps a visit earlier in the day is justified.

We followed this up by visiting one of Brioche by Philip‘s Little Collins Street shopfronts. There are four shopfronts around Melbourne. I ordered a take away apricot brioche wheel. This is definitely not a place for sitting down and relaxing. I am sure it distributes a heap of brioche each day. Having said that the apricot brioche wheel was a pretty joy filled experience to eat. A place to pop buy and pick up provisions – but not a place to go out of you way for.

Just in case you thought I had enough carbs for the day…. day 1 was followed by a visit to popular pizza joint in Richmond with tiramisu for desert. Luckily, I’m riding my Brompton!