Croissants

Among the many weaknesses in my character, the elevenses croissant is relatively recent, although the breakfast croissant stretches back to 1989 and La Cucina on Chapel St when I was working for the ANZ around the corner. Every morning I'd clock on at 8 & then duck out for an hour to read the paper, drink coffee & eat a croissant. That job was probably worth ten of the 100-odd kilos I used to cart around. Anyway, even 1989 is recent compared to the espresso coffee vice, which dates back to 1978 (it was an instant coffee vice before then).

The idea of elevenses (one of the great words) was pretty much absent from my life until I started eating breakfast in 2008, after about a 30-year gap. One of my objections to breakfast had always been that it made me hungry at 11, and curiously, despite being 20 kg overweight already, I was worried about putting on more. It's a kind of pseudo-logic; ignore the idea of a healthy eating pattern on the grounds that adding two meals into an unhealthy diet will only make things worse. Sort of like comparing apples and, say, lard.

Getting back to the main line, eating at 11 is a side-effect of eating breakfast and it just happened that when I was experimenting seriously with breakfast I was living in Guangzhou, and bizarrely Guangzhou is one of the best places in the world to buy croissants. Bread is pretty haut-moderne in big Chinese cities and as a luxury good they take making it very seriously, part of the justification of the unbelievable (in relative terms) price. A good croissant in Guangzhou costs as much as a cheap croissant in Marrickville, that is, around AUD $1.30. (Most food in Guangzhou costs about 1/3 to 1/2 of what it would cost here) But that Guangzhou croissant is a helluva thing. It's fantastic.  (This continues a trend of China supplying some of the best European-originated experiences I have had - three of the best four coffees, for example.) They're light, fluffy on the inside, crisp on the outside, a little bit flaky, an ambiance of butter, damn near perfect. Perhaps, carping, fractionally too small. You can in fact try one in Sydney (probably in Melbourne too) at one of the Breadtop franchises. Breadtop croissants tend to be a little overcooked, IMO, but it only affects the outside. It is an amazing tribute to their franchise quality control that this is as true in Sydney as it is in Guangzhou (at a total of about seven outlets altogether - I'm sure it would be true for all of them).

So, thanks to Guangzhou, I'm a croissant-at-11 addict. Now still, if I'm in Sydney CBD, Haymarket particularly, I'll go looking for a Breadtop croissant. But in the Marrickville/Enmore parts of Andrewsville, there are no Breadtops. But there are still croissants.

Peter's croissant on kitchen table

Peter's (the local milkbar) gets them in from somewhere, they're excellent and cheap. But he doesn't get in that many & if they're gone, I have to duck in to the newsagent. There, they're more expensive, and sometimes a day old. Beware a place that offers to microwave your croissants and looks surprised when you say no - a failing of 2204, the most local coffee shop (pretty much their only fault, other than expense) as well.


Moving on from the croissants that are less than 2 minutes away, there's a fork in the road at Victoria St. Left, up the hill to Enmore, and neither of the two bakeries up there that I frequent does an outstanding croissant (one does an outstanding donut, but I haven't eaten donuts for about three years). Adequate, so if I am there for other reasons I don't see any reason to forgo morning tea, but not at all outstanding. Right, down to Marrickville proper past Mitchell St and the Bourke St bakery (it's a franchise - guess where it started?). I'm a bit ambivalent about the Mitchell St croissants. On the good side, they are big and fluffy. On the other side, for me, they are a little bready, not as light as I like and they don't have enough butter, or, more accurately, they don't have the right butter taste. They tend a bit towards the Breadtop colour, which suggests overcooked, and they are, as befits an East Sydney franchise, the most expensive croissant for miles around, by some margin. Bourke St do a bunch of things - sourdough, tarts, bakery coffee - outstandingly well, but their croissants are only adequate by comparison.

Heading into Marrickville Rd you can easily walk past the first bakery, it's tiny. Whether or not they have croissants is random, but when they do they are very buttery, and cheap. They don't do service with a smile, but I guess if I was 70 and had to get up at 3am to start a 17-hour working day, I might be a bit grumpy from time to time.

Opposite them but a bit further up the hill is the Paris Bakery; the winners as far as I am concerned. Their croissants are not quite as light as the Breadtop version (really, those Chinese croissant bakers do magic on that score, it's not just Breadtop) but they are light, they don't feel like bread, they have plenty of butter & they are not burned. They are also cheap - sometimes I buy two.