Japanese $ $$$ The most popular menu item at Azuki, a Japanese artisan bakery on a curl of residential road 10 minutes from Wolli Creek railway station, is the curry pan. Every second customer buys one. They may take a tray and a pair of tongs and look inside the wooden window cabinets to choose an egg sandwich on soft, fat, white slices of shokupan, or a tartar fish burger, its creamy sauce fringing golden segments of crisped fillet inside a sesame seed-topped roll.
They may reflect on the five-tier glass cake cabinet where pearly white fluffy cheesecake slices resemble Sydney Opera House sails; where creamy vanilla puddings glow like headlights; custard puffs with biscuit lids barely contain their custard fillings; and chestnut Mont Blanc tarts are sculpted mini almond and cream sculpted turrets. But, they always get a curry pan as well. One man, on this spring morning, runs from his just-parked car, orders five curry pans and races back.
His urgency for the crunchy, chewy bun filled with warm beef curry, is normal for Azuki’s owner and chef, Shun Hashimoto. “Everybody loves them,” he says. “They are popular in Japan and that does not change here.
” Hashimoto runs two Azuki bakeries. The first on Enmore Road in Newtown, open for seven years, and this new, bigger second bakery in Wolli Creek, inspired by demand, customer requests and the need for a bigger kitchen. “A lot of customers would drive to Newtown to get their orders,” he says.
“This bakery helps with.