Best Bread

Bread (especially free bread) is served at the beginning of a meal by any good restaurant. It’s important and not merely incidental. House-made butter and steamy, fresh bread are the minimum standard. Care should be put into: warmth, freshness, flavour, density and the butter. Usually wholegrain or rye, for flavour. Either the butter or the bread needs a special/unusual flavour and texture (e.g coming from fermentation, salt, herbs, honey, oil etc). Here are my faves. You can read more about them in my reviews.

  1. Automata 
  2. LuMi Bar & Dining
  3. Sixpenny (leftover coffee and non-coffee sourdough)
  4. Sotto Sopra (Pavoni’s garlic bread)
  5. Ester (fermented potato bread with the dash jelly, trout roe and kefir cream)
  6. Jonah’s (focaccia)
  7. Bert’s (fried bread rolls)
  8. Fred’s (wood oven fougasse)
  9. Quay (not so much for the bread, but for the butter)
  10. The Bridge Room (rye)

N.B I’d include the roti at Momofuku Seiōbo if I felt it didn’t swing too far from the ‘bread’ category. Photos from Quay and Buon Ricordo were lost when my computer crashed (to be updated soon). I also excluded ACME‘s brioche baloney because half the reason it’s so good is because of the baloney and relish inside (it’s more of a dish than merely bread). I didn’t like Iggy’s bread when I had it at Bentley (twice), but at Huxton’s it was AMAZING (potentially a freshness issue?). Also, if we included Melbourne, Dinner by Heston, Vue de Monde, Attica and Igni all have better bread than all of the above restaurants. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj9IPAhAP9F/?taken-by=sydneyflavours

  1. Focaccia at Jonah’s
    Fred’s wood oven fougasse with butter and olive oil.
    Bread and butter (only had a pic with the anchovies) at Bodega 1904.
    Rye and honey bread at Est.
    Sixpenny’s bread (second serving) is made with leftover round-one bread, adding coffee granules. It’s insane.
    Sixpenny’s bread round one (first serving).
    Nothing like Sotto Sopra’s fresh brioche. Although it was far from the flavour punch of normal garlic bread, this was still SO GOOD.
    Pavoni’s garlic bread at Sotto Sopra
    I enjoyed Automata’s bread so much. It’s warm and not sweet like brioche, but with more of a sourdough/rye taste.

    ACME’s brioche baloney sandwich. The bomb. The bread is the star.
    Fried bread. From Bert’s.