New South Yarra cafe bakery Ned’s Bake a bustling beehive for pizza, pasta and pastries
NO flowers, no blueberries, just real food is the motto Ned Radojcic brings to his slick new bakery cafe, Ned’s Bake in South Yarra, where you can have your cake and eat pizza too.
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NO flowers, no blueberries, just real food is Ned Radojcic’s hospitality motto. He brings it to Ned’s Bake, his slick bakery cafe in South Yarra’s buzzy Toorak Rd. A simple, authentic European menu of mainly Italian and French classics is the order of the day here — like tried-and-true chicken-liver pâté with grilled brioche, pesto-laced spaghetti and crispy pizzas that don’t require trendy trappings like edible flowers.
Ned’s is a bustling beehive of a place. Its 60 inside seats provide the audience for the open bakery and kitchen, a throng of activity with seemingly a cast of thousands turning out pizza, pasta, pastries and loaves.
They will soon fill wholesale orders, too, and dinner service to 11pm is imminent.
Serbian-born Radojcic is an aircraft engineer by trade, but with a love of food, opened his namesake bakery earlier this year.
(His partner is Maryanne Shearer, co-founder of the T2 tea empire, who helps with the retail side of things.)
Radojcic believes there are “a million” special-occasion restaurants in Melbourne, so his aim here is for a neighbourhood fave that’s casual, reliable and affordable enough to drop in a couple of times a week.
FOOD
At breakfast, you could go for the mascarpone pancakes with ice cream, strawberries and balsamic vinegar, but this Friday lunch, we’re swinging savoury from the handwritten menu.
The minute steak ($24) is simplicity plus.
The meat was cooked to medium with a well-seasoned crust, plus a good stack of salty fries offset by lightly oiled rocket leaves.
Not rocket science, but supremely satisfying.
Prawns, mussels and clams in a tomato-y tangle of homemade pasta make the spaghetti pescatore ($29) a hearty winter option. This combo also comes as risotto.
A must-try is the pizza — available by the slice ($7) or as a whole. Again, simplicity reigns, letting the ingredients shine. Prosciutto slices so thin they’re translucent top one style of pizza, along with blobs of mozzarella, hits of pesto and an excellent tomato sauce, all baked to perfection.
And you’d be hard pressed to leave without a sweet tart, slice or croissant.
DRINK
Coffee is from small roaster ThreeSixty Degrees. No liquor licence as yet.
SERVICE
Waiters show flair and care with the basics.
X FACTOR
Some might remember this corner site as the Saloon Bar, now given a designer’s spruce up with glass, concrete and exposed brick. It’s bold and bright, with an enticing display cabinet of loaves, pastries, tarts and sandwiches.
Behind it is the venue’s epicentre, the open kitchen and bakery that gives an element of theatre to this approachable, unstuffy bistro.
BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
At $29, the seafood pasta is the most expensive dish — reasonable considering the well-heeled area. Bread is offered gratis before mains.
VERDICT
Always room for more casual yet sophisticated places to dine where trad not trendy rules the roost.
Ned’s Bake
134 Toorak Rd, South Yarra. Ph: 9867 2457
FOOD
Euro cafe/bistro
HOURS
Daily 7am-6pm
HEAD CHEF
Andrew White
BOOKINGS
No
TIME BETWEEN ORDERING AND EATING
12 minutes
PERFECT FOR
Coffee and cake
DESTINATION DISH
Spaghetti pescatore
NOISE LEVEL
Buzzy
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