Jess Lemon Bakery Opens at Last, With Jumbo Pains au Chocolat Worth Travelling For

Masterchef and Dessert Masters contestant Jess “Lemon” Liemantara was meant to open her bakery in Nunawading late last year. Following council delays, the pastry chef was finally cleared to launch phase one – intimate dessert and pastry masterclasses – in May.

Now, phase two is here: Jess Lemon Bakery is open to the public, serving coffee, croissants and her extra-long pains au chocolat.

Phase three will be chef’s table-style degustations featuring intricate desserts paired with Japanese teas and other drinks. But right now, Liemantara is focusing on handling the opening rush.

“I didn’t realise how busy it would be for the first two weeks – the lines take up the whole street,” she says. “We’ve been selling around 4000 pastries each week. It’s calming down a bit now and I’ve had a chance to meet more locals, so that’s been great.”

The menu will change with the seasons, but at the moment locals are lining up for flaky croissants and frangipane-filled almond versions; escargots; cheese-sprinkled truffle and mushroom danishes; and Liemantara’s hoisin pork floss pastry, a play on the pork bun.

Visitors are flocking from further afield for her long, cigar-shaped pains au chocolat – a permanent fixture. “It’s been the most popular item so far. Your standard pain au chocolat is that massive, round pastry where you get like two bites of chocolate,” Liemantara says. “Ours is like a log, so you get a piece of chocolate in each bite.”

The black sesame peanut pastry is also a standout, though it’s the most difficult item to produce.

“The dough itself takes three days to prep, and then building each layer is quite an involved process. The black sesame brittle has to be rolled out really thinly, and at this stage only I can do that while we train everyone up. The caramel takes a few hours to cook, and the crumble that goes between the layers takes a similar amount of time to prepare.”

And Liemantara’s macarons, in flavours like Earl Grey honey, passionfruit and lamington, will be on the menu soon, too.

“We’re planning to bring them back, we’ve had so many people asking about them,” she says. “Things have just been so busy with the pastries that we haven’t had time yet!”

A coffee machine with beans from Mr Sally Coffee sits atop a stone-topped bench that anchors the space. The interior leans functional, with the stainless steel-lined walls of a commercial kitchen, so the idea is to enjoy your pastries and coffee streetside or in the nearby Wood Street Reserve.

Jess Lemon Bakery is the pastry chef’s first solo venture (she co-founded Esme in the CBD with a business partner in 2022), and it’s entirely self-funded. Liemantara acquired the site, previously a tattoo parlour, in 2020 on the advice of her parents.

“It was all I could afford at the time. I poured all my savings into the space because my parents said that it would be a good investment. Initially I lost money on it because of Covid,” she says. “But once things settled down, I saw an opportunity to bring something to this part of Melbourne that the area didn’t really have.

“There wasn’t really any reason for Nunawading, it was just luck of the draw with what I invested in. I was really young and didn’t have a plan yet,” she says. “It’s a great little community on this street, and I’m grateful to be a part of it.”

Jess Lemon Bakery
10 Market Street, Nunawading

Hours:
Thu to Sun, 9am–2pm

@_jesslemon_