Hot List Update: A1 Bakery and Raymond Tan’s Dua Join the Party

The Hot List is the definitive guide to Melbourne’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly. Learn more.

This week’s Hot List Activity

• Added: Dua, A1 Bakery
• Most trending restaurant: Marmont
• Most trending bar: Bar Olo
• Most trending cafe: Masses Bagels

From the woodfire Scotch ovens of the Colonial era to country bakeries pumping out pies, sausage rolls, neenish tarts and vanilla slices, Australia has a long and happy history with baked goods – albeit one that’s drawn mostly from European traditions, Vietnamese bread shops notwithstanding.

In the past decade we’ve seen an increasing number of bakeries building on that foundation with Asian flavours and techniques, like the long-departed Nora, Boronia’s Country Cob bakery, the Hot-Listed Tori’s (founded in 2022) and many others. And that’s where the really exciting stuff is happening.

Insta-famous Malaysian Australian baker Raymond Tan opened his first spot, Raya, in the midst of the pandemic, serving Thai milk-tea and pandan chiffon cakes, plus chicken-and-potato curry pies and brioche rolls filled with soy-and-white-pepper scrambled eggs, caramelised onion and grilled Spam. This week he’s back with the more sedate, but no less exciting, Dua (“two” in Malay) at Collingwood Yards, and we’re thrilled to add it to the Hot List.

The “Scandinasian” bakery and cafe is largely inspired by his travels in Scandinavia. When he visited Stockholm,Tan 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 he makes it with pandan chiffon, pandan pastry cream and pandan marzipan.

The inventive cakes, cookies and pastries that Tan built his name on at Raya (and quite literally turned into art) still feature here, but Dua’s specialty is bread. There’s fluffy shokupan, Japan’s favourite bread for sandos. But also melonpan, a soft, sweet Japanese bun with a crisscrossed, crumbly cookie crust, here piped with almond paste in a reimagining of Sweden’s semla bun. And pandesal, a light, airy Filipino milk bread coated in breadcrumbs, is packed with ube cream.

Savoury options include spam and egg salad sangas, pork and prawn siu mai sausage rolls and snacky breakfast plates, again drawing on Scandi cafes. That theme extends to the mid-century fit-out. Tan sourced designer lightshades, vintage Ikea pieces and a modular sofa from Mood Objects, creating an ideal place to pause with a cherry mocha or a strawberry matcha with malted milk. We love it all.

Don’t forget the classics

This feels like a good time to add an old flame to The Hot List alongside a shiny new thing.
Brunswick’s A1 Bakery, opened in 1992, is arguably Melbourne’s most beloved Lebanese bakery – and a perennial fave here at Broadsheet.

The second-generation business featured in the original Broadsheet Melbourne Cookbook (grab the recipe for its famous spinach triangles here) and returned in last year’s sequel, The New Classics with its shanklish pie. These affordable goods are still generating long queues 30 years on, despite other strong options in the immediate area (Tabet’s and Zaatar, for example.) If that ain’t the definition of hot, we don’t know what is. If it gets too hectic, head to the smaller but no less excellent outlet on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.