Cnr Masonite Rd & Pacific Hwy, Heatherbrae, NSW 2324
www.heatherbraespies.com.au
Heatherbrae Pies is located a couple of hours north of Sydney, and is an ideal place to stop off for lunch or a snack on a road trip up the NSW coast. Ever since starting this food review blog, I’ve anticipated coming here to do a review. The opportunity arrived, I checked their website, and yes, they do indeed sell Sausage Rolls and Vanilla slices!
1003 Pittwater Road, Collaroy, New South Wales
This place is a local institution. It’s been nestled in the same spot in a conspicuous green and yellow building on the side of Pittwater Road, amidst a row of residential houses, for as long as I can remember. On weekends people pull up to park out the front in a continual stream, dash inside to grab a bag of hot pies, and then leave to let the next car grab a spot. Some people linger and eat on the sparse pair of aluminium tables out the front, or sitting on the wooden benches in front of an adjacent house. In the couple of hours around lunch time, there is usually a queue stretching out the door.
The somewhat run down building is decorated with numerous stickers and plaques indicating the numerous pie competitions that the eponymous Sylvia and Fran have won with their recipes. They have a selection of 30-40 different pies, with fillings ranging from the traditional plain minced beef, through chunky steak, to middle of the road combinations such as steak and potato, steak and mushroom, and steak and kidney. Then they stretch into more exotic flavours such as Mexican beef; lamb and rosemary; satay chicken; Thai chicken curry; beef stroganoff; and their multi-award winning chicken, avocado, and brie pie. There are sausage rolls too, in regular and cheese and bacon varieties. Vegetarians are definitely not left wanting either, with a selection including roast vegetable; Thai vegetable curry; Mexican vegetarian; spinach and feta; and potato, pumpkin, and sour cream pies – which are delicious enough to tempt even carnivores.
Stall 66, Adelaide Central Market, 44–60 Gouger Street, Adelaide, South Australia
www.adelaidecentralmarket.com.au/traders/providore
Adelaide’s Central Market is a marvellous place, the likes of which we unfortunately don’t have in Sydney. It is like a classical European food market, with multiple permanent stalls selling all sorts of fresh food ingredients and some specialty items like wines and cakes. There are a dozen or more fresh fruit and vegetable stalls to choose from, each displaying luscious, colourful produce: butchers, fishmongers, cheese sellers, bakers, and so on. And mixed among them all are cafes and stalls selling meals of all ethnicities. It’s easy to spend an hour or more here, wandering around and enjoying the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes.
One of those stalls is Providore, and walking past I spotted something that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Sitting in the display case was a tray of delectable looking slices labelled as “Greek vanilla slice”. They were in a large slab, dusted with a layer of icing sugar on top, and sliced into square pieces. Naturally, I had to try one. (Even if there was no sign of a sausage roll anywhere nearby.)
16 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest, New South Wales
This is one of those wonderful places you get in Australia – the French bakery run by Vietnamese staff. The Vietnamese learnt the art of baking during the French occupation of French Indochina from 1887 to 1954, with the result that today many of the best baguettes and pastries in Australia are produced by Vietnamese immigrants. Indeed, the bread and cakes here are superb. But as we all know, the true measure of an Aussie bakery rests on those two standards of the true blue diet: the sausage roll and the vanilla slice.
I approached La Baguette with every intention of purchasing a sausage roll and a vanilla slice – although in my mind I remembered this is one of those establishments that refers to their vanilla slices as “Napoleons”. I was however thwarted by the fact that they didn’t have anything resembling a vanilla slice or labelled as either that or “Napoleon” in the counter display. And when I asked them, they said that they didn’t make them! Undaunted, I procured a sausage roll, advertised on the menu as a “pork and veal sausage roll”.
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.
5/450-476 Miller St, Cammeray, New South Wales
www.simmonelogue.com.au
This is one of two stores for the small baking and catering company started by the eponymous Simmone. It’s a trendy upmarket cafe with plenty of mouth-watering goodies, including gourmet salads, savoury pastries, quiches, fancy sandwiches, cakes, tarts, slices, and so on. They also apparently do a dinner service with full cooked meals in the evenings.
But I’m here for the sausage roll and vanilla slice. I order them to eat in on one of the chunky rustic wooden tables that looks like you could butcher a side of beef on it. The sausage rolls (as well as the pies) are not kept hot – they are more designed for people to pick up on the way home and reheat at home. But they are happy to heat one up for eating in. While I wait for my order, I admire the country kitchen decorations, including a large set of bookshelves overflowing with well-thumbed recipe books, and vintage French vegetable and flower seed packets in cutesy frames hanging on the wall. It seems these are for sale.
Level 2, Westfield Shopping Centre, Chatswood
This bakery lives in a food court in the giant Westfield shopping complex in Chatswood, wedged between a cafe and an Asian noodle place. It sells freshly baked bread and a selection of cakes, tarts, and slices, as well as pies and sausage rolls. I’ve been here a few times before and don’t have a particularly high opinion of their bread items. I once bought a “bagel” here, only to discover that it was nothing more than a fluffy white bread roll in a very rough and ready approximation of a shape with a hole through it.
But being in the area around lunch time, I decided to take the plunge. I procured a sausage roll and a vanilla slice and took a seat at one of the food court tables nearby to examine and taste. An elderly lady and what I presume to be her granddaughter sat at the table with some lunch of their own as well, and the girl looked at me curiously as I photographed and considered my meal.
4 Ennis Rd, Kirribilli, New South Wales
I’d had my eye on this bakery for some time, but on my previous visit it was too early to eat lunch, and I had only recently had breakfast. But I had quickly checked they had sausage rolls and vanilla slices, awaiting a more opportune moment. That moment finally did arrive last weekend, having visited the area for a jog along some harbour-side paths and a swim at the North Sydney pool. I earned this!
2/40 Miller St, North Sydney, New South Wales
www.sthonorebakery.com.au
Finding myself in North Sydney around 9am on a weekday, I did a quick web search for bakeries in the vicinity. The Bourke Street Bakery was nearest and sounded promising, with Internet reviews recommending the pork and fennel sausage roll highly. But when I arrived there and managed to penetrate the queue of a dozen people waiting to order take-away coffees in order to see what sweet delights lurked in the display cabinet I was heartbroken to see that they did not stock vanilla slices. Thus crestfallen, I sought the next bakery on my search list, St Honoré.
This is a French styled bakery lurking in a nondescript black granite office tower front around the corner from North Sydney station. It too was doing a brisk trade in take-away coffees as the morning office workers began their day in the corporate rat race. Peering through the window I spied both the quest objects, so walked boldly in and ordered. The woman behind the counter reached for white paper bags before I specified that I would be eating in at the small café tables, whereupon she changed to a pair of white plates. I would have liked to have taken the bags outside, but there was nowhere nearby to sit and the morning was chilly.
83 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest, New South Wales
I’ve already reviewed St Malo Bakery in this blog, awarding a 9/10 for their fancy “pistachio and raspberry mille-feuille”, which was deemed close enough to a vanilla slice to count. But the other day I was walking past and popped in to buy a loaf of bread, and lo! Sitting there in the counter display were not only some of those fancy slices, but also some plain “vanilla mille-feuilles”!
Excited beyond belief, I ponied up to the counter, ordering my loaf of bread, “and a vanilla slice, please”. This achieved the desired result, and I stole away from the bakery with a light rye sourdough loaf and one of the vanilla mille-feuilles in hand, packaged with great care in a small cardboard box and then a paper bag for consumption off the premises.