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In some ways, Pantry Story, a new bakery-cafe on Parramatta Road at Stanmore, shouldn’t work. Who walks along Parramatta Road looking for a cafe? Who wants to go to a cafe beside a busy road with six lanes of traffic and little parking?

Turns out, plenty of people. On the weekend, queues for Pantry Story, which opened in February and offers baked goods with an Indonesian and Japanese influence, stretch out the door.

Owners Tiara Sucipto and Hari Wibowo, who grew up in Pontianak in Borneo and
Semarang in Java respectively, did not expect it.

“An influencer came in the first week,” Wibowo says. “We didn’t know they were an influencer, but they posted about us and it was so busy.”

Locals, people flying past in cars and buses or anyone attracted to light, buttery and still warm pastry akin to a foofed bronze doona is lining up for creamy garlic cheese knots, chunky beef brisket hand pies or chubby pork sausage rolls with pear and caramelised onion.

All of Pantry Story’s baked goods, whether sesame seed-flecked savouries, sugar-coated sweet treats or fancy golden filled croissants are displayed on a big, round cream table in the middle of the room. Each item sits on a plate with a name card like an edible sculpture exhibition. Orders are taken at the counter.

“The idea with a round table is when we go back home we always gather with our families at a round table with the lazy susan in the middle,” Wibowo says. “A lot of our menu is family-style comfort food.”

Stroll the table’s diameter to consider glistening shell-like croissants, grass-green pandan java mochi biscuits (inspired by Wibowo’s favourite dessert klepon, a sweet rice coconut-coated cake ball filled with palm sugar), sea salt chocolate biscuit and three-day kimcheese foccacia made with kimchi jam, cheese, sweet mayo, honey and Japanese shichimi togarashi spice.

Rush in today in the hope they’re serving this week’s special; a prawn and chicken roll with honey yuzu sauce, inspired by hekeng, or crispy prawn roll, a regular snack in Sucipto’s home town.

“Usually it’s prawn and pork but I changed it to chicken for people who don’t eat pork,” Sucipto says.

If they’re gone, or you’re hungry, order the garlic cheese knot, a deceptively savoury twirl of pastry filled with pungent chive-topped gooeyness.

“It’s inspired by Korean garlic bread buns,” Sucipto says. “But then I wanted it in a croissant shape.”

Sucipto is the lead baker and Pantry Story began during lockdown when she started experimenting in the kitchen at home. First, she tried foccacia and brownies, or brochis, combining fudgy chocolate biscuit with mochi inside. Friends loved the food.

When Sucipto and Wibowo, who married during lockdown, posted photos online, orders flowed in.

Using one oven in their Wolli Creek apartment, and baking from 2am, they filled
hundreds of orders – collected outside or at railways stations by new fans. As restrictions eased, they sold the range at markets.

Sucipto developed her baking skills at cooking school, expanding to croissants,
scrolls, pastry knots, sausage rolls and pies.

On the hunt for a production kitchen, they found 336 Parramatta Road, a former seafood restaurant with blue walls, two ovens and a vaulted ceiling.

“We liked the kitchen space first but it was really the ceiling,” Sucipto says. “I just love it.”

Wibowo used his interior design skills to paint the beams and walls off-white, install concrete-look flooring, hang soft, cream curtains, install a front counter and rustic wooden benches and create avant-garde tables made from Bunnings outdoor tiles and upturned grey vases.

Pantry Store’s focus is takeaway but people stay to eat with Stitch Coffee brews, tea and cold drinks including iced matcha and coffee.

The neighbours are thrilled. The next-door florist provides arrangements for the big table and an upstairs resident was so enamoured they now work here.

“She said the noise of us opening a cafe downstairs was nothing compared to the planes and passing traffic of Stanmore,” Hari says.

Sucipto smiles. “Opening this shop,” she says, “is a dream come true.”