Enze Bakery
I am a sucker for the real thing: house-made chiffon that actually bounces, soft as a cloud, with a sweetness that shakes hands with your palate instead of clubbing it over the head with sugar. So when ENZE Bakery’s day-in-the-life video slid across my FYP, row after row of cakes being whipped, assembled and sent out still warm from the hands that made them, I did what any rational person would do. I went.
The place started the way the best ones usually do: pastry chef Stella, twelve years deep in the craft, turning out cakes from a home kitchen until the demand forced her into bricks and mortar. Now there are two shops, Top Ryde and the one I hit in Barangaroo. Expectations were high. I wanted cake that still smelled of the oven, fruit that tasted like it had been alive that morning, cream that hadn’t forgotten it started life as dairy, and flavour that actually bothered to turn up.
The day cooperated. Warm, sunny, just enough breeze to keep the harbour honest. Nestled into The Streets of Barangaroo at 20 Scotch Row, right on the corner of Shipwright Walk, the shop sits in that polished waterfront strip between the towers and the water. There is almost always a line. We joined it.
From the outside the place is deliberately quiet, modern, plain, white, zero neon, zero gimmicks. Step inside and the energy flips. An open kitchen full of pastry chefs moving like Christmas elves on espresso: folding, piping, assembling, keeping the promise that what you buy was finished minutes ago, not yesterday, not frozen. The glass fridge is pure colour and temptation from raspberry, matcha, chocolate, honey, lemon, yuzu, mochi, salted caramel, jasmine, mandarin, tiramisu, Nutella right to hazelnut. Something for every mood and every weakness.
We ordered two slices at ten bucks each: strawberry matcha (because of course) and raspberry pistachio. Takeaway. Five-minute walk later we were perched by the water, waves slapping against Barangaroo’s signature sandstone, native trees shifting in the breeze, the street oddly calm despite the CBD pulse around us. Only one problem: no cutlery. None. We improvised. Hunger always finds a way.
Here’s the honest part.
The chiffon itself is good, light, springy, the layers properly proportioned. Then the cream arrives. And keeps arriving. The exterior is buried under their signature frosting until the cake becomes secondary. Your mouth ends up coated in fat rather than flavour. The strawberries and raspberries are mostly decorative, a few fresh berries on top and then silence. The matcha is a rumour. The pistachio is a rumour with better PR. Both cakes, despite the different names on the cards, tasted like the same pleasant, slightly sweet chiffon wearing far too much buttercream.
If your idea of heaven is a thick slab of icing with a cake attached, you’ll be happy. If you came for the flavour written on the label, you’ll leave wondering where it went. Maybe the other varieties punch harder. On this showing, the promise was bigger than the delivery.
Still. The setting was perfect, the kitchen was alive, and the chiffon had real lift. That’s more than a lot of places manage. Just don’t expect the fruit or the named flavour to do much of the heavy lifting.
