Melbourne has long enjoyed an international reputation as a great place to eat. Historically, it’s been as much about the diversity of the offering as the sheer excellence of the cooking, but in 2025, the care and detail that put it on the map is coursing through its bakeries, and the world is watching with hungry eyes.

These business have caught our attention and the list that follows is part of Good Food’s Essential Melbourne Cafes and Bakeries of 2025. Presented by T2, this guide celebrates the people and places that shape our excellent cafe and bakery scenes and includes more than 100 venues reviewed anonymously across 10 categories, including icons, those best for food, tea, coffee and matcha, and where to get the city’s best sweets, sandwiches and baked goods. (These reviews also live on theGood Food app, and are discoverable on the map.)

Bakemono

The often lengthy queue snaking down Drewery Lane – a cobblestoned laneway just off Little Lonsdale Street – is worth joining for the pastries at this tiny Japanese-inspired bakery. Shoji-style timber panelling is found throughout, including framing a large window that allows eager customers to peep into the pastry kitchen before entering. Specialty treats might include manju, a sweet bun hailing from Japan, while various croissants, Danishes and loaves of fluffy milk bread make regular appearances.

Must order: Any of the croissants – crunchy on the outside, delicate and soft inside, and recently placing in the top five in Good Food’s croissant taste test.

273 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, instagram.com/bakemono_bakers

Baker Bleu

Born nearly a decade ago in a humble Elsternwick shopfront, Baker Bleu has burgeoned into one of Melbourne’s biggest names in bread, with three locations here (and one in Sydney). Its newest and largest – in Cremorne – is all sleek stainless-steel surrounds, dealing in dark-crusted loaves great and small, ready-made sangers and winter warmers such as sausage rolls and miso-apple hand pies.

Good to know: The signature single-serve country rolls are a must for soup season.

Multiple locations, bakerbleu.com.au

Bread Club

Some designer bakeries are more about style than substance, but Bread Club is different. This is a club you want to join. Jade-green marble counters are blanketed in a daily tide of iced buns, bronzed palmiers and demi-baguettes bursting with freshness – and by early afternoon, that tide is certainly out. Bestsellers include toffee-chocolate cookies, piping-hot pies and the mortadella sanger.

Must order: Fougasse, the leaf-shaped Provencal bread. Go for the rosemary and garlic.

558 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne; 65 Cardigan Place, Albert Park; instagram.com/breadclubofficial

Candied Bakery

This westside favourite marks a baker’s dozen years, but they’re not loafing around. The cake cabinet’s an enticing mix of cult hits and new tricks. A pegboard displays the daily bread (slicing is offered with a smile) or snag a sausage roll − perhaps sweet, juicy char siu pork. The same puff pastry perches atop a vanilla slice doughnut, a hat-tip to the original.

Good to know: Open for a pre- or post-Scienceworks pit stop

136 Hall Street, Spotswood, candiedbakery.com.au

Core Roasters

Indoor plants, a vinyl collection and dark timber cabinets give this cavernous warehouse a cosy share house feel. Industrious staff roast and pack coffee while regulars catch up over their favourite brew and pastry – both ever-changing. Helpfully, coffee tasting notes are illustrated and accessible (there’s one with 7-Up vibes), but the pastries pose tough choices. Bring a mate.

Best for: Those unafraid of left-field baked goods, from pizza pocket croissants to mango sticky rice Danishes.

14 Barkly Street, Brunswick East, coreroasters.cc

Dua Bakehouse

This sibling to CBD bakehouse Raya casts the net wide for inspiration and its cabinet looks like no other around town. Staff in the open kitchen shape pillowy shokupan rolls and slice slabs of potato rosemary focaccia. Cakes are no-rules mashups that work, whether matcha-banoffee pie or pandan-marzipan Swedish princess cake. Drinks might be TikTok-ready but their quality isn’t an afterthought, especially the malted strawberry matcha.

Must order: Pork and prawn sui mai sausage rolls are country-bakery-meets-yum-cha magic.

Collingwood Yards, 1/35 Johnston Street, Collingwood, instagram.com/duabakehouse

Falco

Few bakeries can claim so many slam dunks: a chicken sandwich that’s in the city’s top 10, a peanut butter-miso cookie that nails crisp-chewy, top-tier sausage rolls and pies (go classic with steak and pepper, or chaos mode with cheeseburger). Sweet pastries are gorgeous and glossy, baked just the right side of dark, and bread is hearty yet still reasonably priced. A true all-rounder bakery.

Good to know: Pies and sausage rolls are also sold frozen to bake at home.

Multiple locations, falcobakery.com

The Flour House

There’s plenty of pastry wizardry on display in 2025, but how many bakeries mill their own flour? Crackle-crusted loaves range from sprouted wheat with sesame to wand-shaped tordu flecked with confit garlic and mozzarella. Flaky, buttery pastries go from white choc-raspberry squiggles to hefty cups of egg, bacon, cheese and kasundi.

Good to know: The Highett HQ includes a cafe. Stick around for hot-from-the-oven pastries, croque monsieurs and ploughman’s boards to share.

3 Graham Road, Highett; 531 Hampton Street, Hampton; theflourhouse.com.au

Hector’s Bakery

Eight years on, sanger specialist Hector’s Deli’s commitment to quality control has resulted in a bakery that not only provides bread to its sandwich shops, but is a destination in its own right. That’s helped by the fact the team has introduced a brand new viennoiserie program. Pastry and sandwich artistry are on full display in the warmly lit chapel of carbs.

Must order: Cinnamon bun. It’s got “Cinnabon vibes”, according to Hector’s owner Dom Wilton, but uses laminated croissant dough.

33 Stewart Street, Richmond, hectorsdeli.com.au

Iris

Copenhagen-style cardamom and morning buns, and seed-studded loaves, are the backbone of this busy Brunswick bakery which has its inner workings on full display for those who grab a table. Sesame-speckled cookies are topped with fat chocolate coins, and round pucks of dough (“tartines”) cradle cheese and greens. On Friday mornings, there’s a run club.

Must order: The Danish morning bun includes alpine-style cheese, lots of butter and marmalade on a seeded bread roll.

1 Wilson Avenue, Brunswick, iristhebakery.com

Small Batch

Pastry’s possibilities are endless in the world of baker Charlie Duffy. Ham and cheese croissants are herringbone-patterned. Kouign-amanns are coiled into caramelised spirals. And apple hand pies come as symmetrical squares with latticed tops. The fact these beauties are sold from the corner of a large coffee roasting warehouse down a nondescript laneway only adds to the delight.

Good to know: Seating is all outdoors – in bad weather, take your goods to enjoy elsewhere.

3-9 Little Howard Street, North Melbourne, smallbatch.com.au

To Be Frank

Following the closure of its Elsternwick outpost, Collingwood favourite To Be Frank has brought its baked goods to East Brunswick Village. At the new architecturally designed bakery, watch the magic of pastry lamination, rolling and piping through the window of a light-filled open pastry kitchen. Crowd-pleasers include baguettes, fruit loaves, focaccia and deli-style sangers.

Must order: The coconut dulce de leche bomb that nods to co-owner Franco Villalva’s Argentinian roots.

1/4 Bedford Street, Collingwood and 3 Village Avenue Brunswick East, tobefrankbakery.com.au

Wild Life

Regularly mobbed by queues, this airy backstreet bakery covers all kinds of carb cravings. Kimchi and cheddar croissants erupt with crunchy rivers of cheese. Gently spiced morning buns are devoured by kids. Classic croissants, decadently frosted cakes, and Danishes topped with the season’s finest fruit fill the cabinet. Plus, there’s a full menu of sandwiches and toasties, and a retail section.

Good to know: Bread often sells out well before closing time, so go early.

90 Albert Street, Brunswick East, shop.wildlifebakery.com

Zelda

Fun-sized and dynamic, this shop does not stop. Find its window filled with cheese and jalapeno pretzels, pistachio-cardamom cake, challah sandwiches, apple hand pies, espresso-walnut brownies, roasted apple bostocks, bearclaws ... the list goes on. Decision paralysis is inevitable, a situation not helped by the fact that Zelda opens just two days a week. Our advice? Throw caution to the wind.

Must order: The traditional croissant – a feathery, buttery thing – took out top spot in a recent Good Food blind taste-test.

54 Glen Eira Road, Ripponlea, zeldabakery.com.au

Good Food’s Essential Melbourne Cafes and Bakeries of 2025, presented by T2, celebrates the people and places that shape our excellent cafe and bakery scenes and includes more than 100 venues reviewed anonymously across 10 categories, including icons, those best for food, tea, coffee and matcha, and where to get the city’s best sweets, sandwiches and baked goods. Download the Good Food app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store to discover what’s near you.