When Raymond Tan visited Stockholm nine years ago, he was struck by the city’s famous princess cake: a classic Scandi torte of airy sponge, pastry cream and jam wrapped in green marzipan. At Dua, his new bakery in Collingwood Yards, he’s put a Southeast Asian spin on it with pandan chiffon, pandan pastry cream and pandan marzipan.
That’s the recipe behind the Raya founder’s second venue (dua means two in Malay), which opened next to Hope St Radio yesterday. “I want to bring a new energy to the bake scene in Melbourne,” says Tan, who refers to the cuisine-crossing sweets as “Scandinasian”.
The inventive cakes, cookies and pastries that Tan built his name on (and quite literally turned into art) still feature here, but Dua’s specialty is bread: loaves of shokupan; melonpan (a soft, sweet Japanese bun with a crisscrossed, crumbly cookie crust); shio pan (a buttery, slightly salty, crisp, croissant-shaped pastry); and pandesal (a lighter, airier Filipino milk bread coated in breadcrumbs). “I always dreamed of having a Breadtop situation,” says Tan.
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SIGN UPHe’s serving them plain and filled: you can get melonpan piped with almond paste (inspired by Sweden’s semla bun), pandesal packed with ube cream for a double dose of Filipino flavour, and shio pan with matcha butter and anko (red bean paste).
There’s also a matcha blueberry cream pie and an ube purin cake (a spin on Japan’s jiggly custard pudding, purin), as well as savoury options like shio pan sandwiches filled with spam and egg salad, chicken and potato kare pan (a riff on Raya’s curry puff, but in a pandesal bun), and pork and prawn siu mai sausage rolls.
Soon, Tan will introduce snacky breakfast plates (one sweet, inspired by Malaysian kaya toast) and one savoury (Euro-style, with comté, eggs and pickles) drawing on the Scandi cafes he frequented on his travels.
The Scandinasian theme extends to the mid-century fit-out. Tan sourced designer lightshades, vintage Ikea pieces including a bar cart and coffee table, and a modular sofa from Mood Objects, creating an ideal place to pause with a cherry mocha or a strawberry matcha with malted milk. There are also a couple of mid-century dining tables, a Japanese pendant paper lampshade, and photographs by Thomas JPG of scenes captured in Japan and Italy.
It feels a lot like you’re in someone’s home, which is good, because Tan hopes you’ll stay a while. “At Raya, it’s so intense, it’s more for take-out – it’s near offices, and it’s so squished people don’t really get to sit and enjoy it. This is big enough to have a proper sit-down. I hope it’s a very welcoming place to grab a bite and just chill, do work, hang out.”
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