Ribbon Pastries to Danish Delights: Publique Bakery, Melbourne

There is no shortage of bakeries in Melbourne but it was the adorable Hello Kitty-esque bow shaped croissants that drew us to Publique Bakery. Located at the Queen Victoria Markets and Preston Markets they turn out a delicious range of breads and pastries. Make sure to bring your sweet tooth along for the array of glistening cronuts and buttery pastries by Sunghoon Kim and his team.

Laura and I had 30 minutes on our way to Daylesford to grab some pastries at Publique Bakery located at the Queen Victoria Markets, deep down the end of Blender Lane in a separate building to the main markets. The bakery has sky high displays of perfect looking loaves of bread. "Is that stunt bread?" I whisper to Laura looking up and up at the display imagining bakers climbing ladders to position them just so. We watch as bakers are busy folding, spraying and cutting in the open factory on one side of the store.

Publique Bakery has been open for a while so there aren't the massive crowds that we saw on TikTok. Still, there's a steady range of customers here that dawdle and gaze at the glazed pastries in the display, wondering which ones to try. Laura and I do a similar dance before just asking which ones are the most popular.

The bow pastry or Pain de Ruban is of course a must order because that is what drew us here in the first place. There are some savoury pastries like Croque Monsieur and a ham and cheese croissant but the majority of the pastries are on the sweet side. We take the boxes to one of the tables outside to try them while they're still fresh.

We start on the bow pastry or the Pain de Ruban or "ribbon bread". This is filled with almond cream custard with tangy raspberry streaks baked through each laminated layer. It's wonderfully crisp and picture perfect. It's also a nice surprise to have something that tastes as good as it looks.

We also try the croissant with its pointed corners filled with coffee cream. Again the pastry is buttery and crisp and the filling is generous to the point of utter gluttony. The coffee cream gives this a strong tiramisu vibe.

The whole pear crumble Danish is very good with a lovely perfectly textured red wine poached pear in the centre. This is larger than the other pastries and requires a knife to share or really enjoy so that you can cut up the pear. The fruit used here is said to be from vendors at the Queen Victoria markets.

Laura loves a cronut and the cronut with yuzu and honey is a luscious, oily accordion textured pastry with yuzu honey cream and chunks of honeycomb on top.

Not everything is a hit for us. The garlic butter croissant does tend to be on the drier side although we do love the garlic butter flavour to it (perhaps heating this up would help). And the Pain Bulgogi holds so much promise in concept (I mean what's not to love about a pastry filled with delicious beef bulgogi?) but is also alas a bit dry and in need of a bit of sauce inside the pastry. Although having said that, these pastries make for a delicious midnight snack at our accommodation.

So tell me Dear Reader, how often do you buy pastries for breakfast?

This food was independently paid for.

Publique Bakery

18 Blender La, Melbourne VIC 3000

Open 7 days: 7:30am-4pm

https://www.publiquebakery.com/