As things heat up this summer, it might be best to leave turning on the oven to the professionals. Luckily for us, three former chefs from two of Melbourne’s best restaurants, Sunda and Attica, have recently opened their own specialty bakeries. These spots offer exquisite, sculptural madeleines; restaurant-quality loaves; and picture-perfect layer cakes.

Madeleine de Proust

Attica’s first-ever head pastry chef, HyoJu Park, and her chef partner Rong Yao Soh (who worked at the then-Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows in London) started this specialty bakery on Instagram before opening a bricks-and-mortar shop last December.

Here you’ll find a dozen creative takes on madeleines, the buttery, seashell-shaped cakes. The Madeleine de Proust versions lean heavily into nostalgia, with rotating flavours like pandan-coconut, pistachio and poppin’ corn.

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Akimbo Bread

The name Akimbo might ring a bell. What started as a lockdown hustle for Sunda-trained chef-owner Lindsay Oates blew up fast. He’s gone from selling slow-fermented country loaves, hot cross buns and fougasse on Instagram to supplying some of Melbourne’s top restaurants and bars – including Aru, Bar Bellamy and Sunhands.
In December, he scaled up again, opening a bricks-and-mortar retail space on Victoria Road in Northcote, along with business partner and friend Louis McCoy. At the new Akimbo Bread, everything is baked in a huge Italian Mondial Forni oven and bread is the star of the show – especially the coveted country loaves, seeded sourdough and fougasse – alongside a host of other Akimbo standards like tartines and pizzettas.

Mietta by Rosemary

After blowing Melbourne away at Attica Summer Camp in 2021with a nostalgia-drenched dessert trolley, former Attica pastry chef Rosemary Andrews opened her own store in Malvern at the beginning of summer. The spot (only a temporary space, while Andrews tests out what it means to run her own bakery) is a large operation that attracts lines up the street.

You’ll find the chef’s signature layer cakes – including honey-misu, eight-layer carrot cake, and a honey, espresso and dulce de leche number – as well as baked cheesecakes, two-texture chocolate cakes, a Negroni chocolate tart and a classic lemon tart.

Additional reporting by Michael Harry and Sasha Murray