Patisserie scene is taking the cake
Just when Perth's latest swish patisserie, Jean Pierre Sancho, had put the icing on the food scene in the city's west end, Fiorentina is getting ready to open a third outlet in the former Murano glass showroom at the top end of Hay Street, pushing the local sweet life to decadent levels.
The venture, between Fiorentina's Issi Messina and Murano's Andrea Sezzi, who has moved to Subiaco, has been six months in the planning and due to open early next month, with a cake counter, champagne oyster bar, restaurant and $80,000 worth of chandeliers.
"We will have two pastry chefs doing the biscuits and cakes," said Issi, who took over Fiorentina Patisserie and Cafe in North Perth with wife Melissa last year.
"All the old favourites will be there, including profiteroles, cannoli, sfogliatelle, mignons, rum babas, Italian brioche and our baked ricotta cheesecake.
"Everything will be made on site and the whole experience will be very Italian, with marble tops, an illuminated perspex bar and Murano glass plates."
Down the road, at Jean Pierre Sancho in the old Natuzzi furniture shop on the corner of Shafto Lane, the experience is very French: reproduction Louis XV tables and chairs, chandeliers, marble and glass to replicate a cafe on, perhaps, the Champs-Elysees.
"There are no sausage rolls," said director Franck Durolek, who brought the 100-year-old concept to Perth in May and plans to open a second outlet on St Georges Terrace later this year.
"But we do have gourmet pies, savoury rolls, bread, two soups each day and our special cakes. There are 12-18 to choose from, plus half-a-dozen big gateaux on display, and people can come in and have something made to order with a theme design if they want.
"We do all the French classics and the opera cake with coffee butter cream, almond sponge and chocolate ganache is the most popular, though everyone also likes the black forest and the chocolate and raspberry tart."
Wholesaler Pam Lannin, who runs Sophisticake in Guildford, said our tastes had changed over the past five years, with European flavours and methods led by Austrian and German influences becoming more popular, especially in tortes.
At the Globe Patisserie and Cafe, in South Perth - winner of the coffee shop/tea room category in the RCA Savour Awards for Excellence - pastry chef Reini Sutter has adapted traditional recipes for feather-light mousse cakes with less sugar and lighter butter creams to satisfy demand.
"People are more conscious of what they eat, so we have to take note," he said.
"Petits fours in glace are out, as is cheesecake - we don't even make it - but our gluten-free orange cake is popular, so are the macaroons, which we do in chocolate and pistachio flavours."
Liz Franssen, owner of Le Paris Brest Cafe & Patisserie in Kalamunda, has just signed up to do a new patisserie apprenticeship at Bentley TAFE and said getting it right was a "precise science".
"It's the attention to detail that counts," she said.
