PAFU sells palm-sized puff pastries in different flavours, and a coffee bun. I have bought from them many times. Whenever I walk past Melbourne Central, I pick one up on the way.
Everything is made fresh and sold fresh, so it is still hot when it reaches my hand. The outside is very crisp and the inside is soft. The sweetness is just right.
What We Bought This Time
This time I bought one of each: a strawberry puff, an apple puff, a pistachio matcha puff and the coffee bun. My view is that the apple puff and the coffee bun are best eaten hot.
Strawberry puff – a bit sour for me, and not sweet.
Apple puff – the one I liked best of the puffs. The apple flavour was a small surprise, because I don’t usually like apple flavours.
Coffee bun – the best of the day. The coffee taste is strong and not too sweet. The crust is crisp, like the top of a pineapple bun, but with its own coffee flavour. A thin layer of salty cheese sits in the middle. It doesn’t feel out of place. It works well with the sweet parts, and gives the bun two textures. It smells of butter, and I finished it in a minute.
Pistachio matcha puff – the pistachio tasted more like the big jar of pistachio spread from Costco. It had a rich matcha taste with a slight bitterness. It didn’t feel cloying, even eating a whole puff.
The Pastry
I don’t normally like sweet things, and I still like these. It is the same reason I keep going back to The Flour in Melbourne, where the sweetness is also just right for me. The shell of the puffs is not a normal choux puff. It is layered puff pastry, which I love. It has more texture than a regular puff, and fresh from the oven it is super crisp.
They also have ice blocks. Today I had the orange and mint one.
Price
Apart from the coffee bun, the puffs came to about $21 for four.
Bakery: PAFU, Melbourne Central
Address: Latrobe Street & Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Hours I noted: 9:00 to 20:00
There is also a PAFU at QV.
We also went to DOH Daily Oven Heaven for a donut, and the rest of our sweet-shop reviews are in the dessert cafes category. More ideas for Melbourne days out are in our things-to-do directory.