In Short: One of the best tasting French pastries available outside of France; found in the fun setting of South Melbourne Market.
A trip to Melbourne is never complete without a visit to one of their markets, and a visit to South Melbourne Market is not complete without a stop at Agathé Patisserie. If you have problems finding it, just look for the pastry store with a long queue of people in front of it and chances are that it will be Agathé.
Agathé Patisserie’s has a clean and simple white store front with the name and logo splashed in the top corner. Inspired by bakeries in Paris, it also has an open concept kitchen where customers can see the bakers at work. While you patiently wait for your turn to get at the croissants you can watch them roll, bake, and carry out tray upon tray of the freshest pastries right before your eyes.
Founder and head pastry chef Agathé Kerr was born and raised in Paris. She is also a professional pastry chef who earned her qualifications at the prestigious École de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris and her speciality is the croissant. Those credentials alone should be enough to convince you that Agathe’s croissants are not like any other you might commonly find at Aussie cafes. Instead, they are more like the huge, puffy, buttery, flaky croissants you would find in Paris, France. As you take your first bite, expect flakes to fall off the crispy outer layer…and don’t mind the mess you’re making, everyone else is too!
Besides their trademark croissants, Agathé Pâtisserie also serves a large, and continuously changing, range of authentic French pastries with a focus on innovation. Infused croissants (think, pandan, matcha, café au lait), along with the cruffin, a croissant crossed with a muffin in salted caramel, Nutella, and peanut caramel, are among the more unusual offerings at Agathé. Because I like the classics, the other pastry that caught my eye at Agathé is their Kouign-amann (pronounced Queen-ah-mahn). It is a traditional pastry that is invented by butter-loving Bretons from the coastal region of Brittany, France. The name literally means “Butter cake”. It is made of croissant dough, with a cinnamon spice filling, generously dusted with sugar and salt right before baking so that it develops a thick, caramelized crust that is at once savory and sweet, delivering a maximum dose of salted caramel sensation. It is rare to find this pastry outside of Breton, as the technique of making a good Kouign-amann is pretty complex, but Agathé has successfully formulated a process of developing individual portions for sale. Its trademark is a sticky, crispy and sweet exterior with hints of salt coming through with each bite.
Agathé Kerr’s philosophy is “…In France, pastries are always fresh because they are baked throughout the day, and we wanted Melburnians to have that experience too…”. They have certainly lived up to that philosophy! It’s welcoming indeed to see a little bit of Paris at the South Melbourne Market and if you are walking through, mark down Agathé as a stop after you’ve completed purchasing your weekly provisions.
Leave a Reply