Abbots & Kinney’s Jonny Pisanelli a master of patisserie

Now, she has eaten a few almond croissants. Let me rephrase that … She lived in Paris for several years as a mere slip of a lass and knows her patisserie. A bite confirmed that we were, indeed, dealing with a superior example of the genre.

So who makes these things? we demanded of our friendly — if tone deaf — coffee vendor. And so began a micro-adventure to track down the man responsible, which wasn’t hard given he had just opened his own retail premises two days earlier in another part of Adelaide’s CBD after years of markets, pop-ups and wholesaling.

Jonny Pisanelli is only 26, and this is no unashamed plug for his business, Abbots & Kinney (it deserves it but doesn’t need it). Rather, it’s a little salute-ette to an inspiring, hardworking and naturally gifted craftsman. If a PR got hold of him, he’d be deemed an artisan before the first meeting finished.

But I suspect Pisanelli sees himself more as a tradesman and small businessman doing the thing that gives him most pleasure. He just happens to do it extraordinarily well.

We found Abbots & Kinney next morning; three days in, so had a lot of others. They were out of almond croissants by 10am. Over coffee and tea we ate two things: one was a kind of straight croissant except the shell was crisper, the folds closer together, and it was filled with a pastry cream flavoured with Strega, a fancy Italian liquor. Out-bloody-standing. The other was like a superior vol au vent except it was built like a rectangular fortress and filled with braised mushroom and pumpkin, goat cheese and pumpkin seeds.

Eventually, Jonny himself emerged from behind the espresso machine (he starts work at 2.30am, bakes, organises his wholesale orders, then opens the cafe and, being a talker, is hoarse before noon) and we just kinda struck up a conversation.

“My passion was soccer and I went overseas to play and meet all my family in a village called Apollosa in the province of Benevento [Campania],” he told us. “It’s different there, food is No 1. My aunty loved making cakes so I used to help her at lunchtimes and I joked to her that when I came back to Australia I’m going to do it.”

Injury put the brakes on soccer, so he came home to Adelaide and did a TAFE course.

“I loved the pastry and I knew that was what I wanted to focus on. At the time there wasn’t a great deal of pastry stores in Adelaide to learn from, which is unfortunately still the case. I remember asking a guy who was one of the only people making sfogliatelle and I said, ‘Do you mind teaching me?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, for $5000.’ I was like, ‘What?’ So I went to Italy and offered to work for free in my province. For four weeks, my sole purpose was to learn sfogliatelle. While I was there I went to France to learn macarons, brioche and croissants too.”

Sfogliatelle are, it seems, a bit of a thing among Adelaide Italians. I had my first memorable example in Naples last year and let’s just say the hotel breakfast buffet gave me a great deal of pleasure.

So we trotted back to Jonny’s the next day to watch the sfogliatelle come out of the oven, be filled with ricotta flavoured with candied orange rind, and eaten with espresso. Man, oh man, I was back at the Grand Vesuvio. No, actually, this was way better.

In cooking, one meets similarly determined young people all the time. Most of the men and women at the pointy end of the culinary tree — in restaurants or specialist pursuits such as pastry — have lived like paupers, travelled to extraordinary places and done menial work, often for many years, to learn and expand their repertoire and bring skills home.

Yes, it’s fun to bag restaurants. Get pious about not being in “their industry”. But this same industry frequently provides the kind of inspiration one needs to stay sane. Jonny’s is just one good story. Who knows who I’ll meet next week?

Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, July 4^th 2015