You'll find more than just pizza at this Neapolitan bakery and cafe in Brunswick
We're nowhere near panettone season, which descends every December with fruit-studded, sweet-bread intensity but you should know that Pulcinella's Vincenzo Marino beat pastry chefs from around Australia to earn the right to represent us in last year's Panettone World Cup in Milan. Making good panettone is art and anguish: that a charming little cafe nails this tricky tradition is another sign of the quality and dedication that infuses everything they do.
Pulcinella's namesake is referenced throughout the shop. A famous character from commedia dell'arte, an Italian pantomime style dating to the 17th century, Pulcinella is a scallywag, lively and determined. He's there in mural form on the wall and his signature beak-nosed mask is referenced in the cafe's logo and stamped on their takeaway cups.
On that, coffee culture is one place where Melbourne and Naples diverge. We drink coffee in the car. We also love sitting down for a leisurely coffee rather than resting an espresso and an elbow on a stand-up counter. Most shockingly, we'll order cappuccino in the afternoon (in Italy it is strictly a breakfast beverage). Apart from coffee protocols, Pulcinella feels like the best of Naples dropped into Brunswick, with all the wit and none of the roguishness of the character after which it's named.
Three more cultural cake spots to try
La Colmena
You don't need to know the extraordinary research that goes into baking Spanish pastries with centuries of tradition: they are as delicious eaten in ignorance as in expertise. But baker Cristina Jimenez can also enrich your pasteleria experience by explaining the backstories to such delights as ensaimada (a Mallorcan treat) and glaseado, a layered extravagance from Almeria. Also popping up at South Melbourne Market.
Prahran Market, 163 Commercial Road, South Yarra, lacolmena.com.au
Afiouni Sweets & Pastries
A major drawcard at Mahoneys Plaza is this bountiful Lebanese sweet shop. Sit down for brewed coffee and knafeh (sweet cheese pie), mochachino and mlokieyh (a layered biscuit, pistachio and clotted cream dessert) and leave with a box of baklava and maamoul cookies to take to an occasion or hoard at home.
528 Mahoneys Road, Campbellfield, instagram.com/afiounilebanesesweetss
Manna Bakery
Sweet, fluffy breads and pastries are the deal at this family-run Korean bakery. I love the hot dog with chipotle and caramelised onion, the salted red bean butter bun and the autumnal chestnut-stuffed white loaf. Visit the store or keep an eye on their socials for periodic deliveries to suburbs around Melbourne.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Herald Sun
2 hours ago
- Herald Sun
Glen Waverley: Agents' bizarre sales tactic is no bull
Two Melbourne real estate agents are going the extra mile to steer buyers towards a house with an out-of-the box listing video showcasing a Spanish matador character battling a bull. BigginScott Glen Waverley director Ming Xu, along with his colleague Eric Liu, are managing the advertising campaign for 2 Callaghan Ave, Glen Waverley, that's for sale with $1.7m-$1.8m price hopes. Taking inspiration from the five-bedroom home's Spanish Mission-style facade, the agents donned matador and bull costumes for the clip. RELATED: Brendan Fevola's huge real estate play pays off Agent's extreme act to sell home with showgirls, Indiana Jones Wayne Carey: AFL great becomes a real estate star to market house with its own pub Dressed as the bull, Ms Xu chases Mr Liu and other colleagues they recruited for the filming through the residence. The matador eventually defeats the bull with a fake sword before everyone involved enjoys a tasty beef dinner at the house. Mr Xu has made other creative listing videos in the past, including one voiced by Hollywood actor Liam Neeson. Earlier this year, Mr Xu had the listing for a Mulgrave house owned by an assistant director's family who know Neeson. They recruited him to star in their home's online advertising clip, a humorous tribute to the Taken film franchise. Mr Xu said it took about two hours to film the Glen Waverley video. 'It's good fun, I think I told Eric, 'I'm going to be the bull', Mr Xu said. 'It did not take much convincing for him to be the matador.' The video's aim was to showcase the house's Mediterranean-inspired build which Mr Xu described as a standout among Glen Waverley's many French Provincial-esque homes. A Bayside-based builder constructed the residence, featuring a formal lounge room, rumpus room, lake views from the upstairs balcony and entertainer's deck, about 19 years ago. The kitchen is fitted with stone benches, an insinkerator, Electrolux oven, DeLonghi gas stove, Miele dishwasher and breakfast bench. A tiled dining area boasts a bay window with plantation shutters, while multiple sets of sliding doors provide access to the garden where there's a lemon tree and magnolia border trees. The main bedroom suite has double-glazed windows, a walk-in wardrobe and dual vanity spa ensuite. Other highlights include a powder room, laundry, solar panels, video intercom and a double garage with internal access. The house falls within the Brentwood Secondary College zone and is close to schools, Monash University, sports facilities, shopping centres and public transport. The house will be auctioned at 3pm on July 5. Sign up to the Herald Sun Weekly Real Estate Update. Click here to get the latest Victorian property market news delivered direct to your inbox. MORE: Scary reason Aus renters won't move Plenty: 'Entertainer's home' boasts theatre, pool, tennis court Hawthorn: 115-year-old church transformed into a family home
9 News
9 hours ago
- 9 News
World's biggest TikTok star leaves US after being detained by ICE
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here BREAKING Pentagon launches review of AUKUS pact Khaby Lame, the world's most popular TikTok personality with millions of followers, has left the US after being detained by immigration agents in Las Vegas for allegedly overstaying his visa. The Senegalese-Italian influencer, whose legal name is Seringe Khabane Lame, was detained Friday at Harry Reid International Airport but was allowed to leave the country without a deportation order, a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed in a statement. Lame arrived in the US on April 30 and "overstayed the terms of his visa," the ICE spokesperson said. TikTok star Khaby Lame has left the US after he was detained by ICE officers. (Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP) The Associated Press sent a message seeking comment Tuesday to the email address listed on Lame's Instagram account. He has not publicly commented on his detainment. His detainment and voluntary departure from the US comes amid President Donald Trump's escalating crackdown on immigration, including raids in Los Angeles that sparked days of protests against ICE, as the president tests the bounds of his executive authority. A voluntary departure – which was granted to Lame – allows those facing removal from the US to avoid a deportation order on their immigration record, which could prevent them from being allowed back into the US for up to a decade. Lame, who is Senegalese-Italian, has more than 162 million followers on TikTok. (AP) The 25-year-old rose to international fame during the pandemic without ever saying a word in his videos, which would show him reacting to absurdly complicated "life hacks." He has over 162 million followers on TikTok alone. The Senegal-born influencer moved to Italy when he was an infant with his working class parents and has Italian citizenship. His internet fame quickly evolved. He signed a multi-year partnership with designer brand Hugo Boss in 2022. In January, he was appointed as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. Last month, he attended the Met Gala in New York City, days after arriving in the US. immigration TikTok celebrities USA World CONTACT US
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Two journalists, an eclectic restaurant and Taylor Swift: Inside the making of Jac Maley's new book
Lunch begins with an editorial intervention. 'I want to say, for the record,' Jacqueline Maley – ever the journalist – announces. 'That this was on my vision board before Tay Tay came. I was so on the zeitgeist.' We're dining at Pellegrino 2000, tucked inside a historic terrace in Surry Hills, where the vibe is old-school Italian with a wink. Chianti bottles sit like trophies, tomato tins masquerade as rustic decor, and ropes of dried herbs and spices dangle above the bar. An eccentric collection of framed artwork lines the walls – including an image of the Michelin Man, beaming over the room like an ironic deity, blessing the carb-loading faithful below. It's theatrical, yet charming. The perfect setting for a pop star – or, in Maley's case, her second novel, Lonely Mouth. Long before Taylor Swift and her gal pal Sabrina Carpenter turned the restaurant into pop culture real estate when they spent the first night of their Eras and Sydney Zoo tour here, Maley was already a regular. She started visiting for the relaxed refinement and crema caramello alla banana (accompanied, no hyperbole, by an entire plate of cream!), but she kept visiting once she realised Pellegrino 2000 also served up perfect inspiration for a novel. 'It's one of my favourite Sydney restaurants,' Maley says. 'The restaurant I had in mind for the novel was elegant and cool, but it was never going to try too hard or be like a white tablecloth place. I love good food, but I hate any stuffy atmosphere.' Maley would sit at the bar, sketching details in a notepad, absorbing the restaurant's textures and rhythms. In Lonely Mouth, Pellegrino 2000 becomes the inspiration for the fictional Bocca – an Italian restaurant with a Japanese twist and a trattoria-meets–art deco aesthetic, located in Darlinghurst. Her narrator, Matilda, works there as the manager: a sharp and solitary 30-something nursing an unrequited crush on the restaurant's bad-boy owner, Colson, and quietly shouldering the aftershocks of her mother leaving her and her sister, Lara, when they were children (made doubly traumatic by the fact it happened outside the Big Merino rest stop at Goulburn, off the Hume Highway). As a menu reduces a sauce, so too does a plot summary flatten Lonely Mouth. It's a novel, rich with humour and sharp observations, about desire – for food, for love, for life – and what happens when that desire gets swallowed. It's about sisters, and mothers and daughters. And Bocca becomes more than a backdrop: it's a space where chaos meets order, appetite meets discipline, and everyone's slightly hungry for something they can't quite name. 'I knew I wanted to set the novel in a restaurant. I thought it would be a dynamic setting,' Maley says. 'I wanted it to be very realistic. I really wanted the restaurant to be like a character in the book, to be so atmospheric, it would take people there.' How many times did she visit Pellegrino 2000? 'You should ask my accountant when I put through my next tax return,' Maley quips. Mercifully, we avoid the worst part of Lunch Withs – the stilted pas de deux over the menu, the self-consciousness of wondering if one's contributions to the ordering are too much, too little, too indulgent, too virtuous. Maley takes full control, like someone who has asked far tougher questions than 'shared plates or mains'? To start, we opt for a pillowy focaccia and truffle-parmesan, an unexpectedly punchy caponata due to pickled celery, and a lush buffalo mozzarella, adorned with figs and honey. The wine stays on theme – a glass of Italian Pinot Grigio and a sharp Catarratto. Photographer Steven Siewert hovers nearby like a set designer reworking a diorama – moving errant phones out of frames, opening blinds for better light, repositioning cutlery with surgical precision. 'It is weird to be on the receiving end of what we usually do to other people,' Maley says. She has a deadline for her own Lunch With interview, with a senior public figure, looming. After completing an arts law degree, Maley started at The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 2003. She comes from media stock: her mother, Judy, to whom Lonely Mouth is dedicated, worked at the Herald; her great-grandfather and great-uncle were political journalists; and her brother, Paul, was a reporter at The Australian. Maley's a senior writer, columnist, podcast host and newsletter editor and, today, the unfortunate soul sitting on the wrong side of the notepad. Yet, Maley's not entirely unprepared. This isn't our first time at the Lunch With table together. When her debut novel, The Truth About Her, came out in 2021, we met for breakfast in a courtyard of a cafe that was a little more toast crumbs than terrazzo tables. Now look at us: dining in a hot spot frequented by actual celebrities. For everyone's sake, I suggest Maley consider setting her next novel in a five-star resort. 'We're cosmopolitan ladies of the world now,' Maley retorts. 'I think we need to really level up. I'm thinking ... Denmark. What's that place? Noma.' The three-Michelin-star restaurant serves 20-course meals and regularly tops lists of the best restaurants in the world. For Lonely Mouth, Maley became something of a restaurant obsessive – fascinated by the ecosystems they contain and the quiet dramas unfolding between courses. She interviewed chefs and hospitality managers, read a stack of chef memoirs, watched YouTube videos of kitchens in action – and, for balance, quite a bit of The Great British Bake Off (the latter more for pleasure). In full Daniel Day-Lewis mode, she even picked up a few waitressing shifts. 'They were sort of a bit bemused, but they were nice about it. I just did what I was told. I think the other waiters were like: Who is this lady? But everyone tolerated me,' Maley says. 'People open up when you take a real interest in them, their lives, what they want to do, what they have done, the thing they are passionate about, and ask them to explain it to you. People were really giving that way, even though it was a weird ask, and no one really knew what I was doing.' It wasn't quite Down and Out in Paris, but the experience gave Maley what she needed: a feel for the choreography, the repetition, the small tensions and quiet triumphs of restaurant life. What surprised her was how much it resembled a newsroom – fast-paced, hierarchical, and always one dropped order away from chaos. 'It's a structured environment, but it attracts people who are unstructured in other ways. It's a little like journalism and a newsroom in that way,' she says. 'Journalists are not people who want to work a 9 to 5 job, they're in for the experience and the adventure. We're solo operators, but we have to work within an organism, which is the newsroom. Newspapers are very hierarchical, even though we're all recalcitrant personalities who don't like being told what to do.' With classic recalcitrance, I break the fourth wall to ask our off-duty journalist if she's enjoying her turn in the Lunch With hot seat. 'Are you checking in?,' Maley jokes. 'It's going great for me, but am I giving you what you need?' A master of the form, I ask Maley for her Lunch With advice – she's got the recipe down, but I'm probably still chopping onions. 'Just get them really drunk,' she deadpans. 'It's quite high pressure, I think. It's like a social interaction on the surface, but your journalist brain is constantly working. ' A pause in proceedings: the main. Pappardelle with stracciatella and truss tomatoes so ripe they look ready to explode on impact. Maley unfolds a paper napkin and tucks it, bib-style, into the relaxed collar of her blue silk shirt. She catches my eye – the journalist's brain, even now, still quietly whirring. 'Can you not put this in the piece?' A pause, a sigh, a smile. 'No, you can, if you want.' The same brain – always scanning for angles and incoming alerts– makes it hard for Maley to write fiction while working her day job. Journalism brings a constant overload of information, paired with the nagging sense you're always missing something important. And while her reporting and novels both circle themes of gender and power, she doesn't see them as flexing the same muscle. Her ideal writing conditions are long, uninterrupted stretches away from work, not trying to wedge sentences between school drop-offs, play dates, early dog walks and breaking news alerts. Annual leave became writing leave – less a break than a change of deadlines. There was also the pressure of following up the success of her first novel and being contracted to a deadline as part of a two-book deal – a deadline she fell so far behind on that she can't even precisely remember when it was. 'I didn't take a holiday in years,' Maley says. 'So I ended up, at the end of it, realising it's quite hard to juggle all of this. It took a toll on me in terms of stress levels, and so that was something that I wouldn't want to do again. ' She's got ideas bubbling away – another novel, maybe a non-fiction project – but for now, she's letting them simmer. And at least restaurants are just restaurants again, no longer research sites in disguise. Loading 'I love cooking, I love gardening. I want to take my dog for a walk, I want to watch TV,' Maley says. 'When you're writing a book, every time you're home, it's always there. And now I'm like, I want to do non-intellectual pursuits for a while.' But first, we have a joint byline to get. As a friendly waitress delivers an unplanned – but not unwanted – tiramisu, we seize the opportunity to try to get a scoop. Did Taylor Swift enjoy a tiramisu when she dined here? The response, cool and non-committal: 'Taylor Swift, who's that? I couldn't possibly say.'
