12/450 Miller St, Cammeray, New South Wales
pattisonspatisserie.com.au

Pattison’s is a small chain with a dozen patisseries scattered across the northern suburbs of Sydney. This one at Cammeray has a long glass counter stuffed full of delicious looking cakes and pastries. As well as the traditional Aussie favourites, they do trendy new things like macarons and fancy cupcakes. They also bake bread and muffins and other such things.

The first day I tried to review this establishment, they had sold out of vanilla slices, so I had to delay my tasting to another day. The next time I was in the area, I ordered one of the sausage rolls from their hot savoury selection, and a slice. I took them out to sit in the sunshine in the adjacent courtyard as I ate. This area has a bit of restrained buzz from the other shops and cafes in the complex.

The sausage roll is long and thin, and reminds me of a pair of skinny jeans with flared ends. The golden pastry looks nice and flaky. However, the inner layers are a bit soggy, and slightly undercooked, leaving the pastry very floury in texture. The meat filling is peppery, with some carrot strips mixed into it. It is a touch soft to the bite, and flavourwise there is not much to distinguish it but the pepper. Overall it’s inoffensive, but quite uninspiring.

The slice is a triple decker affair, with three layers of thick, hard-looking pastry and two layers of dark yellow custard, topped by a generous sprinkle of icing sugar. The form factor is tall and skinny. The pastry looks crisp and biscuity, while the custard looks thick and gelatinous. On picking up and biting, the pastry is indeed very crisp, and it needs some good crunchy chewing once in the mouth to break it apart. Custard oozes everywhere between the rigid pastry slices as I eat. The custard is thick and rather bland, with only the merest faint hint of vanilla. It is slightly gelatinous, very thick, and gluggy, making it feel more like a sort of a kiddy custard dessert than something an adult should be eating. The whole combination with the biscuit-like pastry is uninspiring.

Lest this review be entirely negative, I also tried the French chicken pie. This has a tomato-based sauce and mushrooms in it, and is really quite good. Skip the roll and slice, but maybe try some of the other offerings here.

Sausage roll: 5/10
Vanilla slice: 4/10