Sydney pastry chef Lauren Eldridge was taught to roll croissants by legendary French chef Guy Savoy in Paris, but more recently she’s been hunkered down mastering the art of fitting a Christmas pudding in a can.

Meanwhile, a bar devoted exclusively to canned products will open in Haymarket next year, as part of a sprawling food redevelopment of Paddy’s Markets. Canned goods haven’t had a moment like this since Andy Warhol started painting Campbell’s.

Eldridge has been learning the pitfalls and triumphs of the canning game since September, when she joined Paisano & Daughters, the group behind Continental Delicatessen, which is opening three restaurants in January on Newtown’s Australia Street.

Continental is already known for its “Mar-Tinny” cocktail and desserts such as “Flan in a Can” and the milk and honey “Can-A-Cotta”. Eldridge, one of Australia’s highest-profile pastry chefs, started her Continental canning tenure with her great-grandmother’s Christmas pudding recipe.

Serving four to six people, the pudding is loaded with raisins, sultanas, currants, allspice and brandy, and retails for $68 at the Newtown deli, bar and bistro. A sibling line of canned custard ($18) proved more difficult to nail than its companion pudding, however. “You don’t want to take eggs to the high temperatures you do (in the canning process),” Eldridge says.

The pastry chef is a convert to canning culture, embracing what can be an unsettling aesthetic as food leaves the can, mirroring the form of its former casing – even showing the ridges. Canned goods fuelled armies on the move before becoming the choice de jour of doomsday preppers. More recently, COVID hoarders fuelled demand.

But there are plenty of reasons why tins have been embraced by a cooler, more upmarket food set: canned goods look cute, make great gifts, have a long shelf-life and are greener than single-use plastic.

“Everywhere I’ve travelled, I’ve seen so many different canned things,” says Peter Melick of the inspiration behind the can-themed hawker-style venue, Cans & Crates, which opens at Paddy’s Markets in early autumn.

“It’s a fun angle to take it down,” says Melick, who is head of strategic growth and concepts at Doltone Hospitality Group, which is spearheading the new-look Paddy’s precinct. “What triggered me is I’m seeing so much in cans these days.”

“Cans & Crates is a bar, so the cocktails will be canned, the craft beers will be canned, and the nuts will be canned,” he adds. The venue’s design will even home in on the utilitarian crates you might use to haul cans.

Doltone is also on the lookout for other quirky items to sell, such as tinned T-shirts. How about a new appreciation for the most famous of canned meats, Spam?

“Anything’s possible,” Melick says.