Sydney has a small, exclusive club of desserts that need no introduction. The Strawberry Watermelon Cake is a founding member. Since its debut, it has become the city’s unofficial ambassador of cake, the thing tourists queue for, the thing that turns up in wedding Pinterest boards and strangers’ Instagram grids in equal measure. It is, by any reasonable measure, a Sydney icon. And from late August, it is also getting a proper night out.
Black Star Pastry, the cult Australian patisserie behind it, is introducing Cake & Cocktail, a new after-dark experience exclusive to its Newtown store. The concept is a considered one: signature cakes, matched with cocktails built specifically to draw out and complement their flavour profiles, served in a setting designed less for the grab-and-go crowd and more for lingering.
An Evening Menu With Its Own Logic
The flagship offering is the Cake & Cocktail Flight Experience ($99), a guided tasting that moves through three cakes and three bespoke cocktails in sequence, tracing an arc from bright, fruit-forward notes through to something richer and more indulgent by the end. It is, essentially, dessert with a narrative structure.
For a more casual visit, the Signature Pairings ($35) offer a simpler equation, each cake matched to a cocktail on its own merits:
- Strawberry Watermelon Cake with a Strawberry Watermelon Spritz
- Raspberry Lychee Cake with a Rose Lychee Martini
- Chocolate Oasis Cake with a Chocolate Oasis Old Fashioned
- Origami Lemon Cake with a Yuzu Gin Fizz
There is a savoury counterpoint too, in the form of a shareable snacking menu that includes a miniature version of Black Star’s well-known Japanese Chicken Pie, alongside whipped ricotta crostini, yuzu salt popcorn and smoked nut mixes. Enough, in other words, to make “just the one drink” a fairly ambitious plan.
The Thinking Behind the Shift
Cherif Eldin, Head of Sales and Marketing at Black Star Pastry, frames the launch as a considered evolution rather than a reinvention. “This new concept is an exciting evolution of our brand, giving guests the opportunity to experience our signature cakes in an entirely new way,” he says. “By pairing them with thoughtfully crafted cocktails and shareable bites, we’re creating an experience that’s playful, indulgent and made for lingering.” The choice of location, he notes, was equally deliberate: “Newtown, with its vibrant nightlife and thriving food scene, felt like the perfect place to bring this concept to life.”
It is hard to fault the logic. Newtown has built its reputation on precisely this kind of late-night appetite, and Black Star Pastry’s cakes, the Strawberry Watermelon chief among them, have long operated on a level closer to landmark than bakery item. Handing that cake a cocktail list and a later closing time is less a gimmick than an overdue formality, the kind of pairing that feels, in hindsight, inevitable.
The Details
Black Star Pastry’s Cake & Cocktail experience, exclusively at the Newtown store, is open for those willing to trade an early night for a very good excuse.
Leave a Reply