Category Archives: city

Pie in the Sky, Cowan

bakery, city, nsw, sausage roll

1296 Pacific Hwy, Cowan, New South Wales
pieintheskycowan.com.au

The Pie in the Sky is a bit of a legendary pie shop, operating for almost 30 years on a site on the old Pacific Highway, a winding two-lane road that used to be the only way to travel north of Sydney before the opening of the F3 freeway. The place is nestled on top of a cliff overlooking the freeway below, and across a vast panorama of eucalypt forest in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, across to the Hawkesbury River.

Queue at Pie in the Sky

It’s a favourite weekend hangout for motorcycle riders and vintage and sports car drivers, who prefer the scenery and thrills of the old road over the bland freeway. We arrived at lunch time on a Sunday, to find the car park area almost full to overflowing with motorbikes and fancy cars. Fortunately we located a spot that must have just been vacated, and joined the queue, a good 40 people long, to buy our lunch.

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T2, Chatswood

city, nsw, special

www.t2tea.com

I was walking through a local shopping centre and passed a T2 shop, which sells various types of tea leaves, as well as tea-free herbal and fruit concoctions, and various teapots and other paraphernalia for preparing hot drinks. I often buy their “Liquorice Legs” tea, which is a blend of peppermint, fennel seeds, and liquorice and is my go-to hot drink since I don’t drink coffee or regular tea. But this day I was gobsmacked to see something new in their display window: Vanilla Slice tea.

T2

Obviously, I had to go in and check it out. The neat cubic box stated the ingredients as apple pieces, rosehip, hibiscus, vanilla pieces, and a mysterious ingredient described only as “flavour”. Determining it was caffeine-free, I bought a box for later brewing and reviewing.

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The Corso Bakehouse, Manly

bakery, city, nsw, vanilla slice

3/1A The Corso, Manly, New South Wales

After filling up on the amazing sausage roll around the corner at Infinity Bakery, I had to make a bit of a trek in search of a vanilla slice for dessert. Not too far, fortunately, for on the western end of The Corso lies The Corso Bakehouse, a typical old style Aussie bakery with a store front and a counter, selling cakes, slices, pies, and freshly baked bread, as well as drinks from a fridge emblazoned with a Coca Cola logo. No cafe seating here, but they do have a line in fresh sandwiches to take away, with an Asian twist that includes pork rolls.

The Corso Bakehouse

In the large glass-fronted display is a huge tray of classic looking vanilla slices, nestled amidst other tempting looking sweets. The slices have a slightly rustic look, with the white icing scribbled with some very hasty and rudimentary looking brown markings, as though someone knew the classic parenthesis shape that they were supposed to have, but had done it at rapid speed in between checking the ovens.

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Infinity Bakery, Manly

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll

13 Market Lane, Manly, New South Wales

Continuing my quest to check out what are reputed to be some of Sydney’s best bakeries, I made the trek to Manly to try Infinity Bakery. This is a small shop located in the laneway running parallel behind the Corso, Manly’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, so it’s hidden away from much of the tourist foot traffic. The Manly outlet is one of three Sydney locations, with other shops in Paddington and Darlinghurst.

Infinity Bakery

There are a few cafe tables, and a small selection of sandwiches and pastries (no vanilla slice, unfortunately), but mostly they sell loaves and bread rolls. But there’s also a warmer holding a few pies, sausage rolls, and two different types of vegetarian rolls (spinach and feta; and pumpkin, chickpea, and feta).

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Drummoyne Bakehouse Cafe, Drummoyne

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

150 Lyons Rd, Drummoyne, New South Wales
drummoynesbakehousecafe.com.au

The focus of my ongoing quest turned from chasing reports of the “best vanilla slice” in Sydney to seeking alleged sighting of the “best sausage roll”. One of these sightings was at the Drummoyne Bakehouse Cafe, which seemed a good excuse to go for a lazy Saturday lunchtime drive during a brief sunny respite from the rainy winter weather of late.

Drummoyne Bakehouse Cafe

The bakehouse sits on the busy but narrow Lyons Road, running down the centre of the Drummoyne peninsula on the south side of Sydney Harbour. It has a distinctive green, yellow, and brown striped awning and signage visible from the road, and sits next door to Ocean Foods, which also has conspicuous signage, proclaiming it to be the home of the “Best fish and chips in the Universe”. They certainly don’t do things by halves in Drummoyne!

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Pierre’s Patisserie, Turramurra

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

Shop 8/1380 Pacific Highway, Turramurra, New South Wales
www.pierrespatisserie.com.au

On a fine winter Sunday afternoon, after a relatively light lunch, the call of afternoon tea beckoned, and I decided to make the trip and check out a place that garners a mention in various “best vanilla slice in Sydney” discussion threads on the Internet. The place is Pierre’s Patisserie, on the Pacific Highway in Turramurra, in Sydney’s northern suburbs.

Pierre's Patisserie

According to the potted history on the website, Pierre’s was founded in 1976 by immigrant Frenchman Pierre Cantin. He was not, however a pastry chef, so hired two chefs, who preceded to build a reputation in the local area. The current owner and chef is the son of one of those two, and appears to have maintained the local praise for this establishment.

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El Karim, Roseville

city, nsw, restaurant, sausage roll

126 Pacific Highway, Roseville, New South Wales
elkarim.com.au

One of my favourite places for a nice dinner out is El Karim, a long-established, slightly fancy Lebanese restaurant on the highway in Roseville. I’d planned a dinner out with Mrs Snot Block & Roll and booked a table for two, little suspecting the surprise that was to come. The menu had been redone since our last visit, and now listed amongst the various small mezze plates – such as falafels, fried haloumi, lamb kofta, and the delicious honey and zaatar calamari – was “El Karim sausage rolls”. You know what had to be done.

El Karim

The dish cost $16, and appeared at the end of the meal, as the custom here is to bring dishes out separated in time so everyone can share a few things at a time. The plate contained four rolls, which would do a good job of sharing between four people if you’d ordered a bunch of other things to sample the menu. Each one was maybe half the size of a regular bog-standard sausage roll.

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Bourke Street Bakery, Neutral Bay

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll,

Shop 7/19-25 Grosvenor Street, Neutral Bay, New South Wales
bourkestreetbakery.com.au

Bourke Street Bakery has become a bit of a Sydney institution, as their website will tell you itself – though there is some truth to it. They opened their first bakery in 2004, and have since expanded to a several shops across a bunch of inner city suburbs. They regularly attract rave reviews in the media, and have built a reputation as one of the best bakeries in the city. This is built on a foundation of hand crafted artisan bread, and extended with a range of cakes and sweet pastries, plus a mouth-watering array of savoury pastries.

Bourke Street Bakery

Amongst the latter, they boast a menu of gourmet meat pies, and not one, not two, but three different flavours of sausage roll. In fact, if you search online for “best sausage rolls in Sydney”, Bourke Street Bakery comes up first in many lists. Alas, they don’t do a vanilla slice among their extensive selection of pastries, but ah well, let’s try the sausage rolls anyway. I place my order amidst the horde of hipsters and young mothers with toddlers in tow getting take-away coffees and croissants. My rolls appear on oblong white china plates, one plate per roll. I take them to the outdoor seating in the pedestrian plaza outside and shoo away inquisitively hungry pigeons as I examine the haul.

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The Little French Patisserie, Mosman

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

840 Military Rd, Mosman, New South Wales
tlfp.com.au

One of the nicest things about having a day off work during the week is that you can travel around the city when everyone else is at work. Everything is open, but the streets are populated mostly by people with free time, and the atmosphere is very relaxed and laid back, unlike when hordes of 9-5 workers are around after hours or on weekends.

The Little French Patisserie

On such a fine day, I took a drive to the posh north shore suburb of Mosman, to partake of some of its fine array of victuals. Mosman boasts a swag of high fashion outlets, boutiques, and a high end toy shop featuring such children’s playthings as rocking horses and hand carved wooden soldiers. On the food side, there is a gourmet butcher, and Italian delicatessen, a specialty cheese shop, plenty of trendy cafes, and this place: The Little French Patisserie.

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La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie, The Rocks

bakery, cafe, city, nsw, sausage roll

47 Argyle St, The Rocks, Sydney, New South Wales
larenaissance.com.au

The Rocks is the oldest and most historical colonial-era area in Sydney, and in fact all of Australia. The first English colonists established their settlement here, on a small peninsula extending into Sydney Harbour. Many of the oldest buildings in the country are here, and many of them are reasonably well preserved. The area has now been adapted with shops, cafes, and restaurants, mostly for tourists, but it’s also a pleasant place for locals to hang out and partake of food and drink.

La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie

Amongst this plethora of eateries is La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie, a French bakery specialising in cakes and tarts of the traditional continental style. In a concession to its quintessentially Aussie location, it also does a line in hot pies and sausage rolls. The pies come in three varieties: Boeuf bourguignon, agneau, et poulet chasseur. The sausage rolls come in two types: pork and veal; and pork, bacon, and fennel. For lunch this day, I decided to sample the pork and veal sausage roll. (I shall have to return to try to pork, bacon, and fennel another day.)

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