The Mysterious, Disappearing Bakery

When I travel, one of my top priorities is to find local bakeries. My sister and I have even done a few self-designed tours hopping around to different bakeries and places with great dessert. Almond croissants are my absolute favorite treats to find, but I am open to other goodies as well. I don’t hate.

Thus brings me to the story of the mysterious disappearing bakery.

It was just another day hanging out in the Chinatown of Sydney, New South Wales before my voice lesson. I had made a habit of arriving an hour early each week so I would have time to explore.

On this day, I turned onto a few streets I’d never explored before. I rounded a corner and was face to face with a glass wall lined with wooden shelves and pastries galore. Of course, I went in.

I was greeted by a smile from the Asian woman behind the counter. It was a very small shop with sunny yellow walls and wooden shelves.

I looked over all the shelves, noticing the egg-wash sheen and the crusty edges browned so perfectly. There were pastries with chocolate, pastries with jam, pastries with powdered sugar. Circular pastries, stick-shaped pastries, square pastries. Anything you could imagine.

I settled on a circular pastry with a generous dollop of vanilla custard in the center.

I ate my treat on the way back to my voice lesson on George Street.  The pastry itself was flaky and buttery, with just a very slight crunch. The custard was slightly warm with sweet and creamy flavors. I was completely lost in the dessert. It was gone in no time.

The next week, I set out to get another one of those amazing pastries. I took the same turns down the same streets but somehow the bakery did not appear.

Over the next several weeks, I took time to explore all around the area and could never find that bakery again.

Every once in a while I’ll remember that bakery and the delicious pastry I got there. I wonder if any readers out there know where I’m talking about and know if it still, in fact, exists. I think it would be somewhere around here:

Any field explorers looking for a quick mission??