The best patisseries in Melbourne

Joining the raft of businesses like Mali Bakes, Jaen Jumah and Al Dente Enoteca that popped up during Melbourne’s series of lockdowns, Tarts Anon was conceived when Gareth Whitton, former head pastry chef of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, found himself without a job after the restaurant shuttered at the start of 2020. Drawing on his 15 years’ experience and newfound free time, he established Tarts Anon with the encouragement of his life and business partner Catherine Way. With a customer base initially built off a flyer drop in the couple’s apartment building, Tarts Anon now has a kitchen and pick-up only storefront in Cremorne, where tarts sell out within a matter of minutes. 

If croissants are the benchmark of a patisserie, Agathe Kerr’s clears it with ease. She leaves them out for 24 hours to allow the dough to rest the yeast to ferment, and the butter to develop a flavour like cultured butter. Don’t go past her special edition croissants if they’re available, like the fragrant green pandan-infused one.  

It feels like your birthday every day at Beatrix. This corner café in North Melbourne makes towering bundt and layer cakes daily, as well as sweet tarts. Local favourites are the Red Velvet and the pistachio and lemon curd cake, but you’ll want to buy a slice if it happens to be Bakewell tart day on your visit.

Helmed by owner and baker Wilhem Isaac, this little hole-in-the-wall in a quaint shopping strip attracts queues of locals waiting for the venue’s coffee to go, or battling it out for the last almond croissant. And the almond croissant is worth raving about – its buttery, crisp shell is dotted with flaked almonds, dusted with icing sugar and generously filled with viscous almond paste. Originally from France, Isaac has experience working at small-batch baking specialist Woodfrog in St Kilda, and every baked good here is of top notch quality.

In the cake world, Bibelot’s pastries and confectionary are couture. The gleaming chocolate bonbons look too pretty to eat, and so do the individual-sized pastries. Try the Hazelnut-Praline Crunch a grown-up take on the classic Ferrero Rocher sitting atop a cake made of layers of smooth mousse and crème. 

On its window, Monarch Cakes claims to be “Exquisite since 1934”, and it's not a lie. There’s an old-school charm to this St Kilda cake shop, the kind that no amount of climate-controlled, Parisian pastry precision can match. The bundt chocolate kugelhopf, a marble cake with stripes of melted chocolate throughout, is the kind of cake you want to take home to your mother. Get a slice of the Polish baked cheesecake while you’re there – it’s dense with creamy cottage cheese, made from a century-old recipe. 

You’d almost think you had wandered into a little patisserie in the Marais upon entering Cavallini – the feel is distinctly European. Creations by pastry chef Robert Coco include sourdough and olive bread, panini, pizzette and a range of sweet and savoury viennoisserie including a spinach and bechamel topped croissant guaranteed to make you weak at the knees. There is coffee, of course and a cute courtyard if you feel like eating en plein air / alfresco.

LuxBite’s cakes and pastry are textbook French when it comes to technique,  with not-so-classic flavour pairings. You’ll find green tea and Japanese rice wine in LuxBite's version of the opera cake, and seven layers of nostalgia in the Lolly Bag cake. Try the Kuma tart, which looks like an anime bear’s face, and hides a white chocolate milkshake mousse and banana and strawberry crème within. 

Locals are lucky to have Tivoli Road on their doorstep. Run by head baker Michael James and partner Pippa, the bakery makes deeply tan, glossy escargots topped with chopped pistachios and pork sausage rolls wrapped with flaky pastry and flecked with fennel seeds.