It’s 7 a.m. on a fresh Friday morning and Georgi and I are standing in front of the pop-up pâtisserie in Leigh Street, ogling the pastries. In a previous post on The Adelaide Showgrounds Farmers’ Market, I promised to come and take a shot of the delicious French and Italian inspired creations made by Jonny Pisanelli and his partner Edwina Peoples, who run From Scratch.

Before long, a line of locals has converged on this central city location to snatch a croissant, a Cherry Poppins or a Sugar Daddy to take away. Those who would rather sit and enjoy their pastry can order a drink at Coffee Branch next door (the coffee is great) and relax at one of their outdoor tables where From Scratch will deliver your morning treat on a little wooden board.

I watch as Jonny unloads crate after crate of freshly-baked almond croissants, éclairs and choc salted-caramel tarts from the back of his van, along with innovative pastries with inventive names such as the popular Ugly Raspbetti. It is described as ‘a laminated pastry rolled up and baked with vanilla custard and raspberry then rolled in cinnamon sugar’.

Georgi enjoying her Raspberry Nish Nish

I choose a pain au chocolat. Georgi opts for a Raspberry Nish Nish (a play on Danish) and we take a seat and watch the world go by. There’s nothing quite like starting your day with an early morning coffee and pastry on a café terrace to make you feel alive and part of things. Georgi sips her hot chocolate, which she says is nicely bitter. When she’s available, my sweet-tooth-daughter is my unofficial ‘hot chocolate taster’, a title she earned after accompanying me on a trip to Paris to research chocolat chaud for a magazine article a few years ago.

I bite into my pain au chocolat. It’s flaky and buttery and I hear that crunch as shards of pastry fall in my lap. It smells so familiar, and so good. I take another bite. There is more chocolate inside than in your average pain au chocolat in France, however, so it’s sweeter.

Coffee and pastries (the matchbox toy is our table identifier)

Taste buds tire quickly and it’s in those first few bites that you are most mindful of the sensory experience, when you really savour rather than just eat, and they are always the most enjoyable.  For this reason, I try to adhere to a four-bite rule when it comes to sweet things. Besides, true pleasure is more about quality than quantity and if I’d polished everything off that I’d written about over the years I’d be the size of a house!

Hot Chocolate and Raspberry Nish Nish

Yep, well, even so, sometimes you can’t resist. I ate the lot…it was delicious!

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