Bourke St Bakery Review

It's confession time:

So Surry Hills has well and thoroughly cemented themselves as cafe central of Sydney and one of the most famous spots is Bourke Street Bakery which has expanded well beyond the confines of the quaint, tranquil Bourke Street. Despite going to Surry Hills quite often and being familiar with the oh so many hills in the area I actually have never bought anything from Bourke Street Bakery, that is until now. What makes this story even sadder is the fact that I have accompanied friends to this place so they could buy stuff- but isn't it amazing that I was able to stop myself when all the food was right in front of me.

Pork and fennel sausage roll $4

As my first trip as a customer to Bourke Street I couldn't overlook their signature sausage roll, especially since it was lunch time.

Beware there is minimal outdoor dining so be prepared for takeaway, and there's a small park opposite which makes for the perfect spot to have an impromptu picnic.  

I'm not one to take photos of food once I've started eating but this one I couldn't help, overlook it if you must. 

So if you've read Bitter's take on healthy eating then you can safely assume that my mother and conversely myself are quite the health freaks; we never buy frozen sausage rolls and meat pies so when we do it is the equivalent to catching a unicorn. That said, I do enjoy a good sausage roll provided that it's not filled with (sorry for being brutally honest) crap. I found the meat to be very lean so big thumbs up for that because I didn't have to second guess my decision in buying this. I'm not quite sure that it's as great as they say maybe because I'm particularly biased and reckon that the ones my mum and I whip up to be quite outstanding minus our pastry. The pastry here wasn't so much like the buttery flakey goodness of Black Star Pastry (no one has yet to match this place), but it was commendable. Not entirely sure what the other ingredients were-definitely some carrot, perhaps celery and these seeds (?)- but really who pays attentions to this unless you have allergy that of course most definitely matters. All in all, I may have gone in with too high expectations, I thinks it's a great sausage roll, one that is worthy to be bought- this is a big deal since I never buy sausage rolls- and at $4 it won't hurt your wallet either.

Rhubarb tart $5

Ginger creme brûlée $5

LOVE IT LOVE IT

As a kid we are often told what food we should like and what foods we shouldn't. Take for example the infamous brussel sprouts, till this day I have never tried brussel sprouts and for the record I wasn't one of those kids that ran away at the thought of brussel sprouts. But for me one of the foods that I used to detest as a kid was ginger, now that I'm a lot older (and hopefully wiser), I have come to appreciate ginger, it is still not something that I could eat all day but it is certainly not the food that I would carefully search my food for so that I could take it out. Some of my favourite ginger food/beverages are ginger tea, ginger ice-cream and who can forget gingerbread- the authentic kind; made with a huge punch of ginger. Now this list will include ginger creme brûlée, recently I've had quite a few creme brûlées, this is the 4th one of the year so far including the one I had yesterday in writing this. I feel that I have exhausted all of my creme brûlée options for the year, I need to eat other desserts.

 Usually I can never finish a whole creme brûlée because the custard is so sweet and dense, the solution is one share with someone or two add something so that one can actually finish it. This is where the appreciation of ginger comes into play, it really cuts through the heaviness of the custard and it tastes amazing with blowtorched sugar. To top it all off there is some pistachios on top but really that is only there to make it all look even better, the highlight was really cutting through and having a ginger syrup oozing out. This one definitely lived up to my already high expectations, I just wished I could have tried their chocolate tart as but sadly that one was already sold out.

For a rhubarb tart I was hoping that there would be more rhubarb incorporated rather than just two cuts placed on top. My mum being one to experiment with cooking all sorts of foods has cooked rhubarb on a few occasions, rhubarb in its untouched form is ridiculously sour- one measly bite and any further bites just makes you a masochist unless you love incredibly sour foods. I find this tart to be enjoyable but it lacked the wow impression that I got from the ginger creme brûlée tart. The short crust pastry was buttery, crumbly but with a tart being like that all the way throughout, it was a bit too much for me- I can't handle all that butter.