On day 2, Mary and I had to work off some of the carbs from the first day of the tour. So we upped the route to more than 40kms – no reduction in the number of pastry shops to review.

The focus of day 2 was the eastern and south eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The route I’ve linked to starts at Kooyong Train Station and follows many of the beautiful Melbourne trails. If you need to shorten the route you could finish at Fairfield Train station – saving the last 15kms returning back to Kooyong. You would also need to check the route near the Yarra as some parts have been closed for works.

Sucre du jour – our first stop for the day was a patisserie that was strong on good Asian flavours. I had a delightful Miyuri, which comprised black sesame sponge, hazelnut crunch, kabosu ganache, black sesame chantilly. Mary, feeling the effects of the day before opted for a more modest Portuguese tart. This is definitely a good spot to visit.

Bromley’s Bread – located in suburban Carnegie must be a local favourite amongst the Carnegie households. A good range of pastry covering a range of tastes. Here I opted for a benchmark test of a pain au chocolat. Which Bromley’s passed with flying colours.

While not officially part of the pastry tour, we passed by one of my favourite spots in Melbourne – Haiku and its convenience store Haiku Future. We had a cheeky lunch of broccoli tempura and karaage.

Vienna Patisserie and Bakery – this is best described as a traditional patisserie located in Kew. Its offering was sound and it no doubt served its local community well – but it didn’t have stand out offering. Mary kept to the mini tarts while I opted for the larger fruit and almond tart. Delicious but amongst the crowd we’ve been visiting not outstanding.

Frank and Harri – this was the standout for the day! This was just down the road from Vienna and everything was becoming a bit of a blur. So we opted to take some goodies home. I had the raspberry danish – which, when I finally ate it back at our home location was the best raspberry ‘danish’ I have had in decades. In fact, it used to be of fantastic quality fresh raspberries took me back to the Pompidou Centre in Paris where I had a similarly good raspberry tart. It was that good. Mary choose a Louise cake, which she was similarly positive about. Thus is a Melbourne MUST DO!

Just in case you have not had enough coffee by the end of this pastry tour, you can pop by Kissaten Alphington for a Japanese inspired coffee.

From here you can return to Kooyong along the river or pop over to Fairfield Station.

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!