Local Knowledge: Durian Strudel Earnt This Perth Bakery a Cult Following

In the early 2000s, if you saw someone with a box of Krispy Kremes, you’d know that they’d just returned from Sydney or Melbourne. (That’s right: Perth didn’t get Krispy Kreme until 2014.) How the tables have turned. Now, carrying a small mocha-coloured box with “Freddie Strudels” scrawled across the side in neat calligraphy is a tell-tale sign that a food lover has been to Perth. “We just dropped off some to the Singapore Airlines crew yesterday,” Bibiana Cheng, who co-owns Freddie Strudels with her husband Freddie Deng, tells Broadsheet.

Cheng hails from Singapore, where she started the family’s strudel business, which was originally known as Renaldo Apple Strudel and Pastry. After moving to Perth, Cheng, who is a program analyst by trade, was adamant that she wasn’t going back into the food business. It wasn’t until the couple took a wrong turn and drove past an empty shopfront on Brisbane Street that Bibiana entertained the idea of getting back into the strudel game.

That was 26 years ago. Over a quarter of a century later, Freddie Strudels is still at the same Brisbane Street shopfront. The eponymous Freddie faithfully makes each strudel to order, cutting each sheet of pastry to size and layering it with custard, apples and cream.

The apple strudel might have put Freddie on the map, but it’s not the reason I go there. My heart belongs to its more divisive counterpart: the durian strudel. It’s a hot commodity that’s frequently fought over in my own home, over family dinners and at birthday celebrations at local Cantonese restaurants, taking pride of place on the lazy Susan next to bowls of red bean soup and daintily cut oranges. Cheng laughs at my recollections: “I don’t know why it got so famous – we get a lot of takeaways”.

If you ask me, there are myriad reasons why the durian strudel catapulted Freddie Strudels into many Southeast Asian families’ food halls of fame. It hits the peak Asian level of praise for a dessert (“not too sweet”), remains creamy but not soggy and there’s always lashings of real durian inside. Bibiana swears by D24 for her strudels – she isn’t swayed by other varieties like musang king, black gold, black thorn or D1.

Freddie Strudels also has a small selection of savoury food options, like chwee kueh and the quintessential Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs. Beyond durian and apple, there are other strudel flavours like banana, peach, and pineapple, which is inspired by the Lunar New Year pineapple tart. Plus, there are matcha-cream filled pastry horns and single-bite strudels available for catering orders.

But as regulars can attest, it’s the classics that keep people coming back again and again.

Freddie Strudels
192 Brisbane Street, Perth
08 6111 4181

Hours:
Mon 10am–5pm
Wed to Sun 10am–5pm

@freddiestrudels
www.freddiestrudels.com.au