First Look: The Bread Lords at AP Bakery Continue Their Reign With a Harbourside Rotisserie Joint

Does anyone remember the just-baked Tiny Teddies at the Easter Show? You’d watch as they fell from a conveyor belt, hot outta the oven, then enjoy them from a dinky little paper bag. They were so tasty – tastier than your standard Tiny Teddy, I swear! Simply ‘cos they were fresh. Anyway, that’s what’s going on at AP Quay, the Circular Quay outpost that opened this week.

Now, it’s not that the gold-standard AP baked goods are in any way comparable to those that Arnott’s is baking. But simply that the team is levelling up the already-excellent eating experience by bringing the baking in-store – along with a whopping Rotisol spit flown in from France.

“I’m staring at it right now, it’s quite mesmerising,” AP’s head baker Dougal Muffet tells Broadsheet of the spit, which spins spatchcocks and porchetta. By 10.30am each weekday morning, the meat’s ready to be stuffed into just-baked crunchy white rolls or focaccia, revved up with brown butter gravy or Korean carrot salad and roasted green chillies.

The two big kitchen appliances – and the venue-exclusive menu items – are what sets Quay apart from each of the other AP outposts. “I get confused now myself,” says Muffet. “I think we’ve created a bit of a monster, but for so many reasons we like this approach – of not just being cookie-cutter. It sure is hard to keep up with it. Every store does have its little nuance and that’s by design.”

The newest has all the AP go-tos (yes, the Aleppo pepper scrolls, the pies, the sesame and fenugreek loaves), a few outstanding toasties and a riff on that Tokyo-style egg muffin (will you take it plain and cheesy? Or add a tsukune patty or whack of fried mortadella?). And those deeply golden buttermilk croissants are being proved in-house, then baked on the racks of that new spinning Revent oven.

“They’re just going to be fresh and delightful. The golden hour of the AP plain croissant is going to be from 8 o’clock to 10 o’clock, I’d say – they’re just going to be perfect,” says Muffet.

All that’s just to “keep people entertained” till the rotisserie’s ready, he says. “We’ve got porchettas from Whole Beast Butchery, spatchcocks that we brine and have spice rub on it from Game Farm, then we have these really awesome Scotch fillets from Whole Beast Butchery again – they’re coming off these whole animals that [owner Marcus Papadopoulo’s] aging slightly. We’ve got them in a nice, beautiful pastrami brine. That’s all coming out hot, ready to go at 10.30.”

The AP crew – Russell Beard, Mat Lindsay ( Ester ), Jin Ng and Muffet – are undeniably excellent at what they do. Queues still form for their first spot, AP House, which opened in Surry Hills in early 2022 ; in the three years since, they’ve expanded to seven locations. And are only getting better.

“We’re just trying to turbo-charge: the buns for the rolls are coming out of the oven at 10.30, everything’s crispy, everything’s hot, everything’s just at its peak. That’s the real joy of being a baker, you’re in there and eating everything when it’s just out of the oven at its optimal prime. We’re trying to provide that experience to the general public.”

Combine all that with the “best ever” rotisserie drip potatoes (with a texture that’s part-roasted, part-confit, made in very limited supply each day) and it looks like AP’s done it again.

AP Quay
Quay Quarter, 50 Bridge Street, Circular Quay

Hours:
Mon to Fri 7.30am–3pm

apbakery.com.au
@a.p.bread