These Hot Listed Spots Serve Sydney’s Sweetest Treats

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As a kid, you figure that you’ll outgrow your sweet cravings as you move into adulthood. At least that’s what I thought. Then one day you wake up with more sense than hair and you realise you were right all along – a sweet treat is the highlight of any day.

Thankfully, Sydney has plenty of them. These Hot Listed spots – some well-known, others unexpected – serve up some of the best desserts and sweet treats in the city.

Happy Shop

On the surface, Haberfield’s Happy Shop is a nostalgic American diner-inspired takeaway shop selling hefty, carb-loaded classics. But look beyond the burgers and you’ll find beignets, deep-fried French doughnuts most famously associated with New Orleans. Here, they’re cooked from scratch by Happy Shop chef Jesse Orleans (we love a bit of nominative determinism).

My obsession with beignets was sparked by the famous scene in 2014 film Chef where the main character, played by director Jon Favreau, takes his son to the Cafe du Monde in Nola’s French Quarter. It grew after seeing the resulting Chef Show episode, where co-hosts Favreau and Roy Choi make beignets inspired by the movie. Happy Shop’s beignets are as close as you’ll get to New Orleans-style in Sydney, and that’s as close as you’d ever need to be.

The pillowy dough takes two days to make – a process Orleans says resulted in “a lot of sleepless nights” during testing. Then it’s rolled, cut and fried fresh to order, before being coated in icing sugar straight out of the fryer and served hot. Best enjoyed straight away. Incroyable.

Ard

This Stanmore corner store is a clear contender for Sydney’s favourite sweet-treat spot. Here, you’ll find Lebanese-leaning bakes by Christiana Daaboul, whose baking amassed an online following so big that she decided to open Ard. The menu changes all the time – not that it matters, because everything is excellent – so this is a great spot for a sweet surprise. Whatever Daaboul is feeling is what’s on offer, and menus are usually pinned to the shop’s Instagram page. In June, you can’t miss with a cardamom and caramel cream bun or a vanilla bean chiffon sheet cake.

Previous offerings have included zingy lemon olive oil cakes peppered with poppy seeds; choc-topped baklava with an exceptionally creamy pistachio kataifi filling; and tart, sticky homemade apricot jam sandwiched between shortbread. Enjoy them while you sit on a streetside stool in the sunshine – with a coffee, of course.

Mapo

There are plenty of gelato spots in Sydney, but former architect Matteo Pochintesta felt that the city was missing a next-level traditional-style Italian gelateria. So he opened his own: Mapo. Now, there are three: one in Bondi, another in Newtown, and a Hot Listed spot on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. Mapo’s gelato is made from seasonal fruit and churned in-store. The result is scoops that are smooth, creamy and delicate, leaning into the natural sweetness of ripe fruit to minimise added sugars.

Flavours range from the classics to house specials (Pepe Saya salted caramel, golden kiwi, pear and cinnamon have all made appearances). And Sicilian-style granita is made fresh daily.

On a list of more-ish sweets, Mapo stands out as a light, subtle option, sure to please those with a hardcore sweet tooth and your friend who says they “don’t do dessert”.

Grandfathers

This moody CBD restaurant should be high up on your hit (or Hot) list for dinner alone – but Grandfathers also has a couple of banger desserts flying under the radar. The Chinese restaurant is open late into the night and has two standout plates that wrap things up perfectly.

Try the excellent sticky date pudding, presented through a Chinese lens. It’s inspired by lo mai gai, a savoury dish of sticky rice and meat steamed in a lotus leaf. Here, lotus leaves are instead stuffed with dates, coconut and sticky rice before steaming. The top is then brûléed and finished with vanilla ice-cream and caramel sauce.

If that’s not your style, there’s also the well-documented Macca’s-inspired apple pie. It follows a similar formula to the sticky date pudding, drawing inspiration from another savoury dish: ham sui gok, glutinous rice dumplings usually packed with a pork filling. At Grandfathers, they’re instead coated in oil and fried at a low heat to create a hollow puff. From there, they’re fried at a high heat to add crunch and finally piped with apple-pie filling and served in the shape of a Granny Smith, stem and all. We’re loving it.

The Hot List is proudly sponsored by Square.
Additional reporting by Callum McDermott.