First Look: Shaun Quade Ran One of Melbourne’s Most Ambitious Fine Diners. He Just Opened a Bakery

When Shaun Quade departed from experimental fine diner Lume in 2018, the top chef planned to open another ambitious restaurant in Los Angeles with his business and life partner, Veronica Fil. But it never opened.

“While Shaun was working on the restaurant project, I was planning to develop one of his plant-based dishes – a ‘camembert’ made from hemp and cauliflower – into a food brand, just as a side hustle,” says Fil. “I casually pitched the idea to an investor who I met at an event, and one week later we had US$1 million in our bank account, sold all our belongings and were in NYC to start Grounded Foods. Fuck the restaurant idea, we figured. When that kind of opportunity presents itself, you take it!”

The couple ran dairy-alternative startup Grounded Foods for four years. The brand, which they have since left, was stocked in more than 1500 stores across America, including Whole Foods and Target.

“To be honest, it was just ... it wasn’t for us. It was very high pressure [with] venture capitalists breathing down our necks all the time. I was constantly battling in the Silicon Valley fundraising gauntlet,” Fil says. “I think we developed quite a strong distaste for capitalism.”

The couple moved back to Melbourne last year, after a stint doing consulting work in Canberra. “Because it was so stressful [in America], we literally just wanted to sneak back into Australia, not tell anyone and find our feet again before we worked out our next move,” says Fil. “So we spent some time consulting and, just in the background, quietly working on the concept for what we wanted to build with Vandels.”

Quade says he missed hospitality after what he describes as the “numbers game” of Grounded Foods. On Saturday, June 20 the Brunswick bakery opened, and it went gangbusters, with baked goods selling out on across the weekend.

Bee sting croissants were the first to go on both days. The pastries, inspired by Austrian-style bee sting cakes, see a croissant soaked in honey-and-oat syrup and topped with almond Florentine biscuit mix before it’s baked and then filled with cinnamon-infused crema catalana (Catalonia’s answer to crème brûlée).

Vandels celebrates local produce – something the couple also missed while living abroad – and Quade gets creative with whatever he can get his hands on. All the pastries are made with cultured butter from Victorian company Lard Ass. Pine mushrooms from Mushrooms Anonymous have been infused into a honey destined for future pastries.

Ham-and-cheese croissants are filled with smoked ham from Ballarat’s Salt Kitchen, semi-firm vintage cheese with native pepperberries from Gippsland’s Prom Country Cheese, and spring onion that’s been roasted on a smoker out the back.

That same smoker is also used to make house-made tomato sauce, which comes free with classic pork-and-fennel sausage rolls and pepper beef and gruyere pies. (Fil deems it “un-Australian” to charge for sauce). The ketchup starts with grilled tomatoes, onions and capsicums, with kombu sheets added for extra umami.

Beyond croissants and pies, the line-up also spans lemon and horchata tarts, malted choc chip cookies and spiced coffee buns. Plus, three-day-fermented sourdough loaves made with Hellfire wheat from Tuerong, which are also used for chicken sangas.

While Quade has a reputation for being wildly experimental – a memorable Lume dish featured blowtorched cow’s udder – Vandels is built around food that’s “delicious and easy for people to enjoy,” Fil says.

The bakery’s cheffiest item is a quince and crème fraîche danish. To make the filling, ruby red quince is poached in a honeyed chamomile syrup, then layered with Lard Ass crème fraîche and house-made leatherwood honeycomb. The filling is poured into a tart shell, then set with a jelly made from the poaching liquid, before the pastry is finally coated in an aromatic sugar infused with foraged mountain marigolds.

The couple lives around the corner from the Sydney Road bakery, and the 20-seater is modelled after their home. It’s filled with ’70s-inspired furniture sourced from Facebook Marketplace and a Tasmanian oak countertop Quade built.

“Brunswick just feels right. It’s eclectic, it’s relaxed. People are a bit weird, so are we,” Fil says. “We just missed Melbourne so much. It immediately felt like home [and] we never felt at home in LA.”

Vandels Bakery
446 Sydney Road, Brunswick

Hours:
Wed to Sun 7.30am–3.30pm

vandelsbakery.com
@vandels_bakery