There once was a sliver of a bakery on Enmore Road, a hotspot for cannoli buns stuffed with pistachio ricotta and old-school apple turnovers, mini celebration cakes and ripper sangas. Its name was Saga, by pastry chef Andy Bowden – better known as Andy Bowdy – and his partner Maddison Howes. Despite its success, it closed – the pair were simply done with owning and running their own business. After opening (and then leaving) Salma’s Canteen, Bowden’s back on the tools this week at the Ace Hotel.

Moonlighting in the kitchen at Kiln, Mitch Orr’s rooftop restaurant, he was asked to join the hotel permanently as its pastry chef, taking over desserts and the offering at ground-floor cafe Good Chemistry. “I haven’t been working in a restaurant for a long time, after owning my own business for eight years. Doing Dessert Masters [in 2023] reignited my passion for doing plated desserts. Timing just worked out perfectly. Both [head chef] Mans Engberg and Mitch know what I can do in the kitchen and have been very happy to step back and let me do my thing.”

His sweet opening menu is on now. There’s a scoop of toasted rice cream jazzed up with zesty bergamot granita. An elaborate chocolate number with double cream, sour cherries and ginger. And a particularly special plate of rhubarb.

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“It’s a play on rhubarb and custard, but I schmicked it up into a take on tartare,” says Bowden. A mess of rhubarb sits atop a silky custard, with a treacle and brown butter crumb (using “yesterday’s bread”) and a bittersweet whole orange jam. “It’s rhubarb two ways: you poach one and then you take some that you’ve poached and stick it in the dehydrator. It turns into the same texture as red liquorice. So that’s chopped up all over the top of the custard.”

The “tartare” comes with a cracker too, made of leftover bread that’s turned into a paste then puffed up like a prawn cracker. The ideal scoop gets custard, fruit and crunch.

“It’s not too sweet. My desserts tend to lean to the savoury side. I tend to use a lot of salt and savoury elements.”

His work will fill the shelves at Good Chemistry, the ground-floor cafe in the Ace’s back laneway. “I get to scratch all my itches! Any silly idea that pops into my head I can go and work on, and there’ll be a place for it.”

A bigger pastry team is planned for the future, but for now the brief’s simple and delicious: salted choc-chip cookies, salted honey tarts, slices of banana and date loaf and savoury scones. Plus, a sandwich of the week.

In the Saga days, the zesty Lee Tran sanga – stuffed with broccoli and caciocavallo – had its own fan club. “There are so many mentions of that sandwich,” Bowden laughs. “I didn’t intend for it to happen. I actually thought, ‘who wants a vegetarian sandwich?’”

Well, it’s not on rotation yet, but the crowds are sure to campaign.

@andybowdy
@acehotelsydney
@kilnsydney