Black Star Pastry has a new headquarters a huge two-storey cafe and production facility in the centre of Moore Park’s Entertainment Quarter. It’s easily their biggest venue yet but it‘s not the size that makes it exciting. This is the start of Black Star Pastry phase two.

Thanks to the brand new kitchen space and its state of the art tools (including an ultrasonic robot cake cutter and a rapid-fire egg splitting machine), Christopher Thé and his team of gun pastry chefs (a few of whom are original team members from Newtown returning to the fold) will have time and scope to make more than just strawberry and watermelon cakes all day. “Up until now if I wanted to do any creative work I'd have to get in at four in the morning and get out before the main guys turned up; it's been very restrictive on our creativity,” says Thé. “We have this back log of all these things we want to do.”

They’ll be increasing and elevating their bread production and introducing a new range of pies (as well as wheeling out a pie cart for local football games). There will be many more new items to come; the only hint Thé gives is of a retro vanilla tart and maybe the return of the beetroot chocolate cake.

The cafe itself will for the moment operate the same way and with a similar menu to the Rosebery store. There’s a different feel here though. “In the other sites we tend to stack it full of stuff but this one is all about clean lines,” says Thé. It’s all white paint, big open spaces and a grand mezzanine looking over it all. The entire production area is walled with glass so pedestrians on an afternoon stroll will see how each cake and pie is made.

There’s bigger plans for the space for the future. Thé mentions a cafe menu partly inspired by hotel buffet-style dining (including huge salad bowls, a make-your-own toast station and bento boxes with ploughman lunches in them), and the potential for a licenced evening trade. “We’d love to do dessert wine matchings here,” Thé says.

Black Star Pastry Moore Park 210, Bent Street, The Entertainment Quarter (02) 9557 8656

Hours: Mon to Thu 8am–5pm Fri to Sat 8am–8pm Sun 8am–4pm