I realise that I’m in the minority as I prefer Puffy’s cookie puffs to Beard Papa’s puffs. Its purely the cookie crumb that attracts me. The filling in Beard Papa is better but I prefer Puffy’s outer. So when we walk past Puffy one evening and I spy a new offering, a Puffy Ice Cream puff, I’m straight in the queue. With flavours such as mango sorbet, durian, green tea, caramel, ferrero rocher, vanilla, chocolate and taro, they’re $2.50 each.

While waiting in line, I spy another item, a Puffy sponge cake. Described as a “Classic recipe” of Golden Brown puff pastry filled with orange flavoured Puffy cake I’m intrigued. At $5.60 I figure why not, it comes in its own cute little box (did I ever mention that I am a sucker for packaging?).

I order my taro flavoured puff and cake and go off to taste my chilly little globe of ice cream filled choux goodness. My first mistake is that I don’t really like ice cream at a very cold temperature, preferring it to melt somewhat before tasting. Unfortunately the choux and packaging doesn’t allow for my drips or slightly melted ice cream so I’m left to take bites of the ultra frozen ice cream and the cookie choux. I usually love taro flavoured things but this ice cream isn’t to my taste and my sensitive teeth doth protest painfully so I pass it onto my husband. He enjoys the ice cream but concedes it was a pain in the bottom to eat and that he would’ve rathered a plain ice cream.

Back at the hotel, we open up the cake to find a convenient set of forks and a knife inside and although plastic, the knife is surprisingly able to slice through the cake’s puff pastry shell. It appears to be a puff pastry outer and a plain sponge inside. The puff outer is sweet and prettily patterned and the sponge inside is very soft and fresh but very, very lightly orange flavoured. Its the typical type of sponge that you’ll find at any Chinatown bakery-usually split and spread with mock cream whereas this one isn’t and as a result it comes across as dry and about as boring as it comes. Qu’elle disappointment. I think I’ll stick the the regular puffs.

Puffy

Shop9/ 644 World Square Shopping Centre
Lower Ground Floor
Cnr George, Liverpool, Pitt & Goulburn Streets, Sydney
Open until 9pm

Located on the far flung but picturesque Northern Beaches, lies a yellow and green painted pie shop that apparently does a very good pie. Surely these very health conscious Northern beachers (the healthiest segment in Sydney apparently) wouldn’t be scoffing this buttery pastries? I suppose low carb gymwork only sustains you for a while before you just have to bite into a hot pastry.

I’ve actually called ahead to reserve myself a pie, as I am intrigued by the chicken, brie and avocado pie and didn’t want to miss out. For good measure I also reserve a cheese and bacon sausage roll. For the other pie I’ll decide when I get there. Run presumably by Sylvia and Fran (whose names remind me of Fran and Sylvia Fine from “The Nanny”), I’m picturing two Jewish ladies with big hair and nasal Queens’ accents behind the counter. The truth is far from it. As we drive up one sunny Saturday afternoon, past the snarls of traffic headed towards Manly beach, there’s a big queue outside of people. The shop is painted in the Australia colours of green and gold with an Australian flag flying atop. There’s also an area to the left where on someone’s fenced off lawn, there are benches and tree stumps serve as a place to eat the pies.

It’s a very small shop, more a counter with a bit of room to queue and a small side table. There’s nary a Nanny character to be seen, it looks like a family business and the boys at the counter look like they could be part of the family. I have trouble deciding on my other pie, the Beef and Burgundy won Gold in the Great Aussie pie competition but that was in 2002 so it seems a while ago. The one that catches my eye is the breakfast pie, with egg, bacon, mushrooms, tomato sauce and mash ($6) so I order this along with my chicken, brie and avocado pie ($7.20) and Cheese and bacon sausage roll ($3.50).

Prices are about $6.50 for most pies up to $7.20, which is a little higher than your average pie shop but obviously judging from the queue, it’s not an issue. There are over 30 fillings ranging from Lamb & Rosemary, Tuna & Avocado, Singapore Curry, Mexican Curry as well as 5 steak pie variations, 7 chicken pie variations as well as a large selection of vegetarian pies with a choice of 6 fillings.

With my goodies secured we go outside to partake of our spoils. The Chicken, brie and avocado is adorably decorated with two hearts and a swirly ribbon. It’s a good 12cms in diameter which is probably why it is a bit more expensive than your average pie. Opening it up, it is packed with tender chicken, brie and fanned out sliced avocado. I am one of those people that prefer to eat the innards of the pie with a fork before eating the crust separately. This way I can also taste the flavour of the filling a bit better.

Our first forkful yields a creamy tender chicken breast filled pie (not dry breast though, very soft), unmistakably brie-ish and made even creamier by the avocado. It’s very good. Taking a bite with the pastry, the brie flavour is somewhat lessened by the pastry. It is very flakey pastry on top but not as buttery as I’ve had. The really buttery pastry could have me enraptured but this is nice but just not buttery enough for a butter monster like me.

The open topped breakfast pie with egg yolk peering out at us like a curious cyclops is next. It’s smaller than the chicken pie and the mash is quite dry, I suppose as a result of this being made more for the breakfast crowd than the lunch crowd and it tastes like powdered potato to me I’m afraid, which is a pet hate of mine.

The egg by now is hard and rubbery so I leave this behind. Biting into the filling, it tastes like spaghetti bolognaise sauce with the tomato, bacon and mushrooms. There’s just too much tomato sauce on it to qualify as a breakfast pie, although if they took to mash and egg off the top it would very faithfully represent a bolognaise pie.

Our sausage roll is last. Cut in half it has some melted cheese at the top and the centre looks like regular sausage with perhaps some ham ground into it as it’s pinker than your regular sausage roll filling. I wasn’t sure what to expect here, perhaps a layer of cheese and a layer of sliced bacon on top of the sausage meat. It’s fairly good but not particularly strong in the cheese and bacon flavour, especially when you compare it to the Bourke Street Bakery’s sausage rolls.

Sylvia and Fran’s The Upper Crust Pies

Open Daily 7am-5pm
1003 Pittwater Rd Collaroy
Tel: +61 (02) 9971 5182

Growing up in Australia at 158cms I’ve never been tall. I’ve always sat on the bottom row of the school photos, and always needed to ask for help reaching the top supermarket shelves. I prefer the term petite to short. So it was a surprise to me when I lived in Japan a few years back that I could actually see the tops of people’s heads. The heads were usually the oba-sans (middle aged matrons) or salarymen but I finally felt what it was like to be able to feel tall. I mentioned that this was only the middle aged people as the youth of Japan, particularly the men, are getting taller. I assume the wider and more varied and more Western influenced diet is responsible for this.

Visiting Takeru, a Japanese eatery that serves food that the younger Japanese eat out -western style pizza and pasta with a Japanese twist, with a lot of cheese just further emphasises the new Japanese diet. We’re preparing for our holiday to Tokyo in June this year and this helps get us excited about it. And before you ask, this place has nothing to do with the Japanese world champion of hot dog eating, competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi

We’re visiting on a Sunday night at 8.45pm and it’s not too busy. They want us to share a table even though there are a few tables free, I suppose just in case there is an influx! I already know what I want to try-the Japanese style pizza and pasta which I miss so much. The pasta sauces include all of the usual suspects like squid ink, kinoko, scallops, clams, bolognaise and cod roe. There is also ramen and the usual Japanese ramen, katsu, meat and salmon dishes offered on the well worn menu. We select the Omochi curry gratin (rice cakes gratin with curry sauce) $6.20, wafu pizza with chicken and mochi rice cakes ($9.90) and Sake cream spaghetti with the Sake being salmon rather than the alcohol ($9.90).

Salmon cream pasta $9.90

The pasta arrives first, and fairly quickly on a large square plate. It’s linguine rather than spaghetti and has small chunks of salmon interspersed throughout the creamy sauce. It’s good, the pasta well cooked and exactly like the cream sauce in Japan and the salmon chunks, at first looking a little few and far between are revealed under the linguine. And just like a Tokyo Izakaya table, it comes with optional parmesan and Tabasco sauce (Japan started me on my love of Tabasco).

Omochi Curry gratin $6.20
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