This is a world-class croissant

Let’s just say this is a world-class croissant with absolutely nothing left on the table.

Pastry chef Kate Reid of Lune. Picture: Sarah Matray

Years ago, living above a small boulangerie in the Quartier Latin, I would rise at dawn for cafe au lait and M. DuPont’s fresh fougasse with confiture de framboises and beurre from Normandy and… only kidding. I never lived in Paris.

But I did spend nearly five months living above a crappy cafe in Corsica, sharing a room with an Aussie mate and putting English holidaymakers who hoped to learn a few dinghy sailing basics off the idea forever. And eating croissants every day.

They may or may not have been good croissants, I can’t recall, but to me they were a revelation: crisp on the outside, light, fluffy and buttery within. Still warm from the oven and light years ahead of anything I’d eaten in Melbourne. And this was Porticcio, not Paris.

There have been croissants in the intervening 35 years, from Armadale to Aix, but nothing remotely like the pastries made in Melbourne by Kate Reid, the fascinating woman behind the international phenomenon that is Lune. The self-taught chef is responsible for “the best croissant in the world” as nominated by a New York Times journalist (which doesn’t seem such a rigorous assessment to me). So let’s just say this is a world-class croissant with absolutely nothing left on the table when it comes to ingredients and inputs, equipment and love.

Reid started Lune seven years ago; her croissants became a bona fide Melbourne thing about two years later. The queues were legendary. The Instagramability of a single pastry proved profound.

But it was a less than predictable path that led to her leasing a small wholesale bakery and declaring herself a croissanteuse (I made that up). After studying aeronautical engineering in Melbourne, Reid took herself to Britain to pursue her career ambition: aerodynamic design in Formula One. She worked for the Williams team, then the short-lived Spyker team. And maybe it takes that kind of brain to develop a unique pastry folding method that results in a so finely laminated croissant as Lune’s?

We’ll power through the chicane of Reid’s history to say that she needed to return to Australia where a deep-seated passion for baking led to part-time work – “it opened my eyes to how beautiful and medicinal food can be” – and a patisserie book that “changed the course of my life”. It wasn’t the book per se but a photograph of Du Pain et des Idées, a traditional and famous boulangerie in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. Reid being Reid, she went to France, went to the bakery, and impressed them so much they offered her a three-month stage. That in itself was unusual; she didn’t speak French.

One week in, they offered her an apprenticeship. That’s really unusual. Reid loved Paris, but had committed to a job with a Melbourne cafe entrepreneur (now her business partner), along with her brother Cameron. She returned, did the job, left, opened the bakery, lived upstairs, decided wholesale sucked but knew she had something. “The lines started. A few weeks in we realised we had a bit of a phenomenon on our hands.”

Fast forward. Lune is now in a striking Fitzroy warehouse, which is where I finally ate my first Kate Reid croissant. I doubt I’ll eat one better, ever. Strip away the fancy premises and you have the most intense, exciting single product focus. I love this stuff. Vive l’Australie.