First Look: Cobb Lane’s “Grown-Up” CBD Bakery Is Here

When former Vue de Monde chef Matt Forbes opened the first Cobb Lane at Yarraville in 2013, a CBD location “felt out of reach”, he says. “Lots of businesses are made or broken in the city. It’s quite an intimidating place.”

But Cobb Lane quietly gained a following for its 36-hour-fermented sourdough, and by 2022, the petite inner-west cafe (originally on Anderson Street, now on Taylor Street) had expanded into markets in Richmond and South Melbourne. It now provides doughnuts, cookies, viennoiseries and other bakes to more than 200 cafes around Melbourne. This week, it officially opened a CBD store inside a new development on Bennetts Lane. “The brief was: us, but grown up,” he says.

Like its other stores, the new 15-seat venue is mostly “geared towards takeaway,” says Amy Newman, Forbes’s business and life partner. But the idea is that office workers can enjoy lunch under the olive tree across the road, outside Caretaker’s Cottage in Wesley Place. 

Raw products are prepared at the Yarraville bakery, transported, then baked in one of the deck ovens on-site, so the smell of freshly baked bread perpetually wafts through the air.  The walls are lined with classic sourdough loaves and other options, like five-seed baguettes and German-style vollkornbrot (dense rye bread).

Pork-and-fennel sausage rolls and cheesy vego pies of cauliflower and cumin sit alongside three types of ciabatta and focaccia sandwiches, featuring mortadella, pastrami and other cold-cuts. Plus, there are loaded focaccias topped with mixes of ’nduja, anchovy and tomato, and a pumpkin and pistachio dukkah option.

Look out for the pork pie, an English comfort dish that’s traditionally served cold, but comes hot here. Sage, fennel and mustard seeds flavour a mixture of fatty pork shoulder, smoked guanciale and pancetta, which is then stuffed into a dome of hot-water crust pastry and baked until golden. Or go the more typical Aussie route with a steak-and-pepper pie made with Pep and a chicken-and-pancetta sausage roll.

Cobb Lane has expanded its coffee program here to catering to CBD office workers. There are blends from Duke Coffee and changing local roasters as well as hot and iced teas from First Nations-owned Blak Brews, which specialises in native-ingredient-forward tea. 

Cobb Lane CBD
17 Bennetts Lane, Melbourne
(03) 9939 5579

Hours:
Mon to Fri 7am–6pm
Sat & Sun 8am–3pm

cobblane.com.au
@cobblanebakery