Journey to Zumbo's Part 2

So getting to Zumbo’s Patisserie proved a bit of a journey. Not that it’s particularly difficult to get to, but just because I’m a little bit of a terrible guide. In fact, all my food journeys seem to involve very long detours…

Anyway, this time we drove over to Darling Street and managed to park too far away. So we started walking out and about 5 minutes in realised we were about 300 houses away. But as She-Wears-Skirts helpfully pointed out, “they’re skinny houses”. So one 25 minute walk, a promise to return to Kazbah for a breakfast feast and yet another detour later, as She-Wears-Skirts and I bypassed the patisserie by almost 50 houses, we arrived. Was it worth it? Most definitely.

Destination found! Sorry we were a little too embarassed to take pictures of the inside...

The Patisserie is choc-a-block full of pastries, cakes and macarons, and completely stuffed. It’s tinily tiny and really doesn’t have much space for bad-decision makers and sightseers. But the staff are very nice and the cakes are absolutely beautiful. We decided on lunch in the form of 2 pizzettes – a roasted vegetable and pinenut one ($7) and a potato, rosemary and goat’s cheese one ($6). Of course, She-Wears-Skirts and my detour was not without purpose and we walked back for lunch in the park we’d seen.

Potato, Rosemary and Goat's Cheese Pizzette

The pizzas were both really delicious and filling. Between the five of us, we couldn’t even finish it! The pizza base was very thick and a bit chewy, almost like Turkish bread, and the toppings very generous and really yummy! My favourite of the two was potato pizza, which I will be attempting to recreate sometime soon. I especially liked the goat’s cheese on that one, and the sweet potato and olives made a really tasty balance on the vege pizzette. Taste and value wise, the pizzettes were really super! They were heaped with toppings, just the way I like it, so that for cold pizza, they were still delicious.

Roasted Vegetable and Pinenut Pizzette

The cakes at Zumbo’s are a little too pretty to leave Balmain without, so just before we left we picked up a few goodies for home… and some free Banana macaron samples! (very very nice banana filling) Yay for free samples! We also had a selection from Pancakes and Maple, Peach Tea, Chocolate and Macadamia, Dark Chocolate, Ginger Beer, Pine and Lime, Toasted Marshmallow and other flavours of macarons I can’t remember. We had a few of those and picked up a few cakes – a Pineapple version of the famous Pear Perfection called (It Tastes Sweeter which apparently is a dirty name according to the guy who served me???), a chocolate trifle (pronounced try-fle), a lychee, coconut and ginger cake and another passionfruit tart.

Of course those goodies are for our families so we haven’t quite tasted those ones yet… and photos may or may not be coming... (depending on when I get them and if I bother) But overall, our rather epic trip to Zumbo’s was well worth it! And rating-wise? I think I’d give Zumbo’s a 6 out of 10 for the actual café and patisserie (a 6 just because we got to see him). It was a bit too squishy and small for me. And an 8.5 out of 10 for the food – really yummy and really beautiful to look at! Definitely two thumbs up from me!

So until next time! Hope you all had a lovely chrissy and have a super duper New Year!

c.c.