The Ultimate Pain du Chocolat...South Melbourne edition

or chocolate croissant, in Australian.

I love pain au chocolat. A lot.

When I worked in Paris for many years, my go to breakfast was picking up a pain au chocolat from my favourite bakery and savouring it as I walked to work. In Paris, I was spoiled. Every now and then I’d try a different bakery, and more often than not, it would be great too. It was a good life.

Since then, good pain au chocolat have been a bit harder to find…until I moved to Australia. On a recent trip to Melbourne, I decided to find the best pain au chocolate, at least in South Melbourne (and a few in the CBD). Of course there are many more, and please tell me which ones I missed so I can visit them when I am back in a couple of weeks.

But I didn’t just try them. I’ve also been working on my scoring system. It started to look a bit like this…

· Presentation (out of 5): How good does it look?

· Chocolate (out of 5): How good is the chocolate inside? This includes both flavour and generosity. Is it a hard stick or does it melt nicely.

· Taste & Texture (out of 5): Is it light and crisp or dense and doughy? Do the layers of buttery dough mix nicely with the chocolate or are the two not on speaking terms.

· Experience (out of 5): The café, the service, the atmosphere, the weather, the mood — everything counts, including the price.

Please note that, one, I’m being picky and, two, If I had any of these again, as I likely will, they may score differently the second, or even third time. Not only is each pastry a bit different each time, but my mood and taste buds are too.

South Melbourne Bakery (Price $8) A first, this bakery looked like a traditional Aussie bakery with lots of cakes and meat pies that are all fine, but not great (every neighbourhood seems to have one). But no, this is not that. It is a warm hug full of friendly staff, friendly locals, and one delicious looking pain au chocolate. This one is brushed with apricot jam on top which I was skeptical about at first, but sold on after my first bite. The clincher…look at that gooey chocolate goodness.

Presentation: 4.5/5 Chocolate: 4.5/5 Taste 4.5/5: Experience :5/5 Total: 18.5/20

Cobb Lane Bakery (Price $8.50). This one had beautiful layering but was a little doughy when eaten. The chocolate was so sweet and a little bitter and had a burnt aftertaste. But Cobb Lane Bakery is literally the cutest little bakery you have ever visited, so major brownie (or chocolate croissant) points there.

Presentation: 4.5/5 Chocolate: 3/5 Taste: 4/5 Experience: 4.5/5 Total: 16/20

Agathé Patisserie ($8). This pastry shop inside South Melbourne Market always has a very long line up due to its social media friendly branding and desserts. Maybe because of that, I didn’t expect much. But if you go first thing before the tourists are up, not only is there no line, but the staff are so friendly (they even remembered my son’s order from the day before). The pain au chocolate is MASSIVE, bigger than my daughter’s head. The chocolate inside was very sweet and rock hard so there was a bit of a disconnect between all that air and the chocolate stick.

Presentation: 5/5 Chocolate: 4/5 Taste 4/5: Experience :4/5 Total: 17/20

Woodfrog Bakery (Price $6) I really wanted to love this one so much. With that price tag (Australian food is expensive), and the promise of “creamy Belgian chocolate” my expectations were high. But, sadly, it just didn’t quite deliver. The pastry was too doughy for my liking, lacking the light crisp flakiness I was hoping. The Belgian chocolate was one of the better ones I tasted, but wasn’t creamy but hard batons. Perhaps my expectations were unfairly high. Their sourdough is beautiful. And they named their bakery after a small burrowing frog that doesn’t eat bread, which I respect immensely.

Presentation: 3.5/5 Chocolate: 4/5 Taste 3.5/5: Experience :4/5 Total: 16/20

Chéri (Price $8) This isn’t a pain au chocolate. It is a dessert. Layers of sweet covered in sweet and filled with sweet. But gosh, isn’t it gorgeous? This one makes for a stunning photo, and probably nice enough accompanied by a cup of strong tea, but this ain’t breakfast folks. I couldn’t find the brownie, but nevertheless the name is fitting. Service was surprisingly bad (lots of staff chatting but no one working despite a long line and then not serving the line in order…) which didn’t help with the experience score.

Presentation: 4.5/5 Chocolate: 3/5 Taste 3/5: Experience :3/5 Total: 13.5/20

Standing Room (Price $8) In the CBD, Standing Room has a great atmosphere, great coffee and, drum roll, a great hot chocolate. They also have a pretty great pain au chocolate. Votes for the cutest looking (we saw googly eyes, if you see something else, shame on you). Generous chocolate, great layers, no complains here. Click here to see my full review of Standing Room’s hot chocolate.

Presentation: 4.5/5 Chocolate: 4.5/5 Taste 4.5/5: Experience :5/5 Total: 18.5/20

Lune (Price $8.50) Lune ownes the title of best croissant in Melbourne. They have the best story (founder moved from designing race cars to designing croissants, you can’t beat that). But the pain au chocolate? Standing in line with 50 tourists waiting to try the “famous croissants” doesn’t help things. Plus I’ve had these croissants, a lot over the years, and have fallen in and out of love with them. But this morning, I must say, it was really good. Good size, flakiness, chocolate, everything was balanced.

Presentation: 4.5/5 Chocolate: 5/5 Taste: 5/5 Experience: 4/5 Total: 18/20

Which ones should I try next?

Thanks for reading,

Giselle

Chief Chocolate Sipper at www.ultimatehotchocolate.com, @ultimatehotchoc on insta and very very shortly releasing The World of Chocolate book.