If you've lived anywhere near Newtown over the past 15 years, you'll have eaten at Pastizzi Café.
In fact, you'll have eaten there again and again and again. You might have moved far out of the area long ago, but every now and then (hopefully more now than then), you'll make the pilgrimage, just to bite into one of Lenny and Debbie's pastizzi. If you know, you know.
"It's all in the way we make the pastry," says owner Debbie Ross, who runs Pastizzi Café with her husband Lenny Ross. "It's a skill in itself and takes [our bakers] at least six months to perfect."
It's worth every second of those six months. The pastry at Pastizzi Café is somehow just as crisp as it is soft. Flaky, but still with plenty of density that gives nicely as you chomp down. It's buttery without being oily. Crunchy on the outside, yet pillowy within. It's truly not of this world.
But wait, there's more. The pastry is merely the wrapper of about 19 different flavours. Old favourite spinach and ricotta has consistently been the best-sellers over the years, but others are starting to nudge it from its perch.
"The gourmet range we created is really good, especially the beef and dark ale," says Debbie. Other flavour bombs include Mexi-bean, a vegetarian offering that blends Maltese pastizzi with a Mexican fiesta; the sweet offering of berry and custard; and chicken and chorizo, which is fast becoming a customer favourite.
Back when Debbie and Lenny first started making pastizzi, most of their customers had probably never even heard of chorizo. They originally owned the Maltese Café on Crown Street in Surry Hills. Regulars will remember sitting out the front on milk crates, munching through piles of 25c pastizzi while the Bridge traffic roared past.
"We moved to Newtown in 2007 as it was a smaller premises and rent was a lot cheaper than in the city at the time," says Debbie. "Newtown was such a great place to be as it was a real foodie hub where a lot of people from all over Sydney came to eat as it had a very wide variety of all types of cuisine."
What Newtown didn't have was a Maltese pastizzi shop. The Maltese heritage is Lenny's. He's a second-generation Maltese-Italian-Australian, his mother having emigrated from Sicily with her parents at the age of 12. His father was of Maltese descent.
"I grew up with my grandparents and mother and spent a lot of the time in the kitchen with my nonna who was an exceptional cook," explains Lenny. "Growing up in ethnic household food and family is always a big part of our life. Eating and sharing and laughter, long days spent making our sauce and stocking the bottles on the shelves."
The menu at the café features both Maltese and Italian food. There's the pastizzi, of course, and on Sundays in winter, the special on the menu is - a traditional Maltese slow-cooked rabbit stew that sells out quickly.
Other days it's Italian pasta and mains like veal Bianco and pollo cacciatore that tempt diners away from pastizzi. The five different types of homemade ravioli is pounced on by regulars. Fillings like pumpkin and ravioli or chicken and porcini mean the ravioli rivals the pastries for those in the know.
Rivals, maybe, but never beats. "It is definitely our pastizzi that our customers keep coming back for," says Debbie.
Those unbelievably good pastries for a fair price, which has always been important to Debbie and Lenny. Over the years, customers have become family and it's the buzzing, familiar feel of the café that brings people back again and again. Lenny and Debbie have always loved that about the café business.
"What's brought us the most joy over the past 15 years and before is meeting people. Every day is different and we love sharing our food with everyone," says Debbie.
make your own
Pork and pea pastizzi
After thirteen years in South Newtown at number 523, in late 2019 Pastizzi Café moved north up King Street to number 109. The premises are bigger, which means more room for regulars, but the Rosses were heartbroken to leave their old hole in the wall near Alice Street behind.
So recently they reopened their old place and now operate from both premises. Despite the change to two outlets, "not much has changed since the early days," says Debbie. "Just a few more pastizzi creations and our customers love that we are still consistent and reasonably priced."
109 King Street, Newtown, (02) 9519 1063
Monday: Closed
Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday: 10am - 10pm
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am - midnight
Down Malta way
Maltese baked ricotta pie
