All posts by David Morgan-Mar

58 1/2 Espresso, Sydney International Airport

cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll

Sydney Airport Terminal 1, international departure lounge, Sydney, New South Wales
Sydney Airport website listing

Stuck in the airport waiting for a flight leaving late in the evening is a bad place to be. You know you’re going to get a meal on the plane that you’ve already paid for, but it won’t be until well after your normal dinner time, and you’re starting to get hungry. And the only thing available is airport food outlets.

Cafe 58 1/2

I felt the need for a snack to tide me over and help kill the time, and I spotted a literal pile of sausage rolls behind a glass counter display at this little cafe between gates 58 and 59. It’s called 58 1/2 Espresso – oh, I get it! Very clever. Hopefully the sausage rolls will be at least as entertaining, as I take the plunge and fork over the typical airport gouging price of $5.50 for one.

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Mara’s Italian Pastry, San Francisco

cafe, overseas, vanilla slice

503 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, USA
www.sanfranciscorestaurants.com/maras-italian-pastry/

I was visiting San Francisco for a conference, and outside of conference hours I spent some time exploring the city. The North Beach area is famous for its Italian heritage and modern day Italian restaurants. Mixed in with the pizza and pasta places are a few little pastry shops. One is the famous Stella Pastry & Cafe, which I’ve visited before and is so good that I wanted to return for dessert after a dinner nearby. But alas, for the week that I was in town, Stella’s was closed for renovations!

Mara's Italian Pastry

But this being North Beach, fortunately I didn’t have to go far to discover another Italian pastry shop. I was walking down Columbus Avenue when my eyes were drawn to the sugar-laden windows of Mara’s Italian Pastry. This hole-in-the-wall was a tiny cafe with only three small tables inside, and a counter loaded up with biscotti and other baked goodies. The real treat was in the front window, however, which contained succulent looking fruit danishes, poppy seed cakes, slices, rolls, and countless other delicacies. There were also a couple of trays of square dish pizzas, cut into slices, for anyone silly enough to come in here and want something savoury.

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Piccolo Deli, Mount Victoria

bakery, cafe, country, nsw, sausage roll

30 Station St, Mount Victoria, New South Wales

A leisurely Sunday drive up into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney for a day out provided the opportunity to sample bakery products from a bit further afield. We stopped for morning tea at Leura, having a Devonshire tea of scones hot from the oven (they had literally taken them out just minutes before serving them to us), with home made strawberry jam and double cream. The scones were chocolate chip and cranberry, which made things even more decadent. After spending some time in Katoomba, we found ourselves in Mount Victoria when lunch hunger hit. So we parked in this small mountain town and walked to the Piccolo Deli, which also serves as a cafe.

Piccolo Deli

In the display counter were various pastries, both savoury and sweet. They had two types of sausage rolls: beef and onion, and pork and fennel, as well as a vegetable roll for the meat-free. A few rolls were hot in a pie warmer, but the friendly woman behind the counter said they could heat up anything for eating. Naturally, I ordered one of each of the sausage rolls, while Mrs SB&R chose the vege roll.

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Krispy Kreme

special, vanilla slice

My work has a social club, in which a monthly fee gets you access to various events and give-aways throughout the year. Today they had free doughnuts. Now, I’m not a member of the club, and I don’t eat doughnuts (I like them well enough but I gave them up completely a long time ago as a concession to healthy eating), but it turned out that the selection – from Krispy Kreme – included a “vanilla slice doughnut”! And when the call went out that leftovers were available for people to claim seconds, a friend of mine grabbed one of these for me. So I decided to violate my 20-year abstinence solely for the purpose of research for this blog.

Vanilla slice doughnut

The doughnut is neither a traditional toroidal doughnut nor rectangular prism vanilla slice shape. It’s a square pillow of dough, presumably cooked by deep frying as is usual for the product. The surface of the dough glistens disturbingly with fat and sugar. The top side is coated with what looks very much like conventional vanilla slice icing: a thin layer of white topped by a pattern of brown lines dragged into the classic parenthesis shape. With some trepidation, I take a bite.

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Rustique, Mosman

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll

920 Military Road, Mosman, New South Wales

I’d taken a Wednesday off work, and decided to head out for lunch. I took a drive to the suburb of Mosman, which has a long main street with dozens of shops and cafes. Unfortunately my first choice for lunch had just sold out of sausage rolls when I arrived – the man immediately before me had bought the last two! So I wandered in search of another bakery for my lunch.

Rustique

I found Rustique, sitting on the corner of Military Road and Raglan Street. The sign proclaimed it to be a “bakery patisserie cafe”, which sounds good. Mosman being a posh suburb, I expected it to be a bit fancy inside, but it was very standard bakery-cafe sort of decor, a bit tired looking even, as though overdue for a renovation. Furthermore, even though there was a fairly large selection of cakes, they didn’t have a vanilla slice! I decided to try a sausage roll and a pie, and seek a slice elsewhere.

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Sweet Infinity, Sydney

cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll, vanilla slice,

Shop 18, Strand Arcade, 412-414 George St, Sydney, New South Wales
sweetinfinity.com.au

This is a tiny cafe in the upmarket Strand Arcade in the heart of Sydney. The Strand is an historical Victorian era shopping arcade, lovingly restored and full of quaint little shops that offer exclusive services such as bridal fashion, jewellery, antiques, high fashion, millinery, a shoe maker (an actual workshop with a guy hand-making shoes from large sheets of leather), fancy chocolates, cigars, a shoe-shine service, and a barber with fully reclining chairs on which men lie back and have their faces lathered for a cut-throat shave.

Sweet Infinity

Amidst this, Sweet Infinity offers tea and coffee, and a selection of fancy looking and lovingly made baked goods. Mrs Snot Block and Roll and I looked in a few months ago and noticed that they serve pies and sausage rolls, as well as various cakes and slices, including a vanilla slice. So we stored it away in our memories for another day. Today was that day.

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The Brooky Pie, Brookvale

bakery, city, nsw, sausage roll

650 Pittwater Rd, Brookvale, New South Wales
www.thebrookypie.com

The Brooky Pie is a small family-run business with a single pie shop on the busy Pittwater Road just north of the vast Warringah Mall shopping centre. The pies are lovingly hand made in a traditional fashion, and they also have a vegetable pastie and a sausage roll. There are a handful of sweets on the menu, including an apple pie, custard tart, and caramel slice, but alas no vanilla slice.

The Brooky Pie

Nevertheless, being in the area at lunchtime one day I ventured in to sample the savoury wares. I selected a pie and one of the sausage rolls.

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Dinky-Di Pies & Pastries, Pyrmont

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll,

35 Union Street, Pyrmont, New South Wales

I found this place on a day walk around Sydney Harbour, following the Seven Bridges route. With “Pies & Pastries” in the name, this had to be a good place for finding material for this blog. Unfortunately, on the day when I first spotted it, I had just had lunch a few minutes earlier, at a place a block away, so I had to make an excursion to return on another day and sample the wares.

Dinky Di Pies & Pastries

I assumed they would have a vanilla slice as one of the advertised pastries, but upon entering the establishment I discovered that they had more varieties of pies and sausage rolls than sweet baked goods, and that the pastries didn’t include a vanilla slice. I asked if they made them and perhaps rotated their selection from day to day, but the lady behind the counter said they only made the ones currently on display. Nevertheless, I’d made the trip specially, and they certainly had sausage rolls. Not just one, but two different varieties: beef, and lamb and rosemary.

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Delitalia Gourmet Foods, Crows Nest

cafe, city, nsw, vanilla slice

84-90 Atchison Street, Crows Nest, New South Wales
www.superfresh.net.au/superfreshcrowsnest.html

Delitalia is a cafe and Italian delicatessen on the premises of the giant Superfresh greengrocer in Crows Nest. I buy fresh fruit and vegetables here sometimes, and this is also the supplier for the imported Italian pasta that I get for cooking fancy pasta meals. Besides the usual fruit and veges, the deli stocks a wide variety of meats, sausages, cheeses, and Italian groceries, including ready to heat-and-eat items such as arancini and lasagnes. They also have a cake section in the attached cafe, with ricotta cakes, cannoli, biscotti, shortbread, and numerous other delights. And nestled amongst these is the good old Aussie vanilla slice, but with an Italian twist.

Delitalia Gourmet Foods

I ordered a slice and sat at the indoor tables – there are also a handful of al fresco tables just outside on the footpath. It’s served on a plate lined with a sheet of paper, with a fork supplied for eating. It’s a very attractive looking slice, with a multifarious layered appearance. From bottom to top, there is a layer of golden brown pastry with plenty of flakiness evident, topped by a layer of dark yellow custard with a slightly moist appearance. This is topped by a second layer of custard, much lighter in colour and more dry looking in texture. Then follows a repeat of these three layers, topped by a third layer of pastry, which is in turn topped by a slab of white icing with the traditional crosswise lines of brown dragged into an alternating zig-zaggy patten by a skewer during the icing process.

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Fare Game Poultry, St Ives

city, nsw, sausage roll

St Ives Shopping Village, 166 Mona Vale Road, Shop 116, St Ives, New South Wales
stivesvillage.com.au/fare-game-st-ives/

I found myself a bit peckish in the St Ives “shopping village” (really just a name for a covered shopping centre), and saw this place adjacent to the food court area. Fare Game is a poultry butcher that sells a selection of uncooked chickens, chicken cuts, skewers, pre-marinaded chicken pieces, chicken sausages, and other meat such as turkeys and ducks. It also has a hot food section, selling hot roast chickens, lunch boxes of chicken pieces and chips, and on this day a suite of chicken sausage rolls.

Fare Game Poultry

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