New flavours are the icing on the cake at Hearthe in Stanmore

If you sit at the right table at Hearthe, master pastry chef Christopher Thé's new cafe in Stanmore, you can watch the creator of the world's most Instagrammed cake look in an oven.

Or stand, calmly answering queries from staff members about the four types of cream available to accompany his new range of signature cakes, while he prepares roast pork with crackling, rice congee with smoked barramundi dumplings or fried kipler hash with smoked salmon.

I don't know if Thé, who starts work around 3am, is preparing all the Hearthe menu items every day. But he is working, head-down, arms gently whirring between bench top, oven door, chopping board and ingredient bowls, with a serene round-the-clock tenacity that centres the cafe's buzzing open kitchen .

Years of working nights in fine dining, and honing the cake magic that put Black Star Pastry, and Thé's famous strawberry watermelon cake, on the global map, has inured him to working pre-dawn to day's end.

"I'm the father of twins," he says. "So this is nothing."

After selling Black Star Pastry to the Jackalope Group in 2019, Thé spent two years looking for the right cafe premises. He settled on the former Mrs Underwood site, originally a butcher shop, on a wide-pathed corner site beside Stanmore Station and library.

"When I walked into this cafe, it felt like home," he says. "It's a beautiful room. It's Federation and I've always lived in Federation places."

It also had the back-end space he needed.

"Every Black Star, it was always too small after a few months," he says. "This is roomy, we're composting out the back, building a sustainable process. I just love the place."

So do a raft of locals who fill large outdoor wooden tables and dinky round ones inside the bright, light-flooded, curve-fronted shop. Framed by jugs of cut rosemary, potted monstera and birds nest fern plants and cream tiles accented with blue and acqua stripes, they help themselves to a tap offering chilled, sparkling or ambient water.

The menu, which swings between savoury and sweet dishes, includes a hearty, slow-cooked meal of the day, ranging from paperbark lamb to roast pork, kangaroo Wellington or chicken tagine. 

There are, of course, heady signature cakes, along with pastries, pies and filled rolls using seven kinds of house-baked bread. Coffee comes from the Little Marionette and there are milkshakes, smoothies, juices and iced tea.

There's also beer, wine and three cocktails including a life-enhancing Green Ant gin and tonic.

A key aspect of Hearthe, an amalgam of art, heart, earth and Thé, is its founder's exploration of indigenous ingredients, including herbs, flowers, spices and ground powders. Most are found in the signature cakes, but they feature in the luscious bacon and egg tarts, egg and bacon rolls, golden handmade meat pies, saltbush scones, cream varieties and dishes including native Akoya oysters kilpatrick and kangaroo wellington.

The Geraldton wax cheesecake, a creamy, fragrant baked goat's curd wonder, merges desert lime, strawberry gum biscuit, ermine cream, rose petals and a crown of Geraldton wax jelly bubbles.

The paperbark dacquoise, a mix of crunchy, chewy, flaky textures, conjures eucalyptus leaf and the sooty zing of a bush campfire, the latter due to Tasmanian oak chip smoke injected into the chocolate ganache.

The hibiscus cake, a snowy symphony of basil olive oil sponge spiked with gin, features raspberry gel, hibiscus marshmallow, candied hibiscus and speckled lilly pilly. It's a mouth sensation, soft, fruity, sweet and strong but not overwhelmingly so.

"A lot of native ingredients and flavours can be confronting," Thé says. "A little bit adult, sometimes bitter, sometimes strange, sometimes very acidic. So you really have to be careful to pair it with something people are comfortable with, like a cheesecake."

He's also aware how fast menu items go each day. The "Every Thing Sold Out Sorry" door sign is often up in the afternoon. Thé is working on that challenge, too. 

Being responsible for a globally famous means cake also means customers are hungry to revel in his kitchen wizardry. 

As lunch winds down, a man with two eskies arrives to commune with a slice of Geraldton wax cheesecake, before loading up several pre-ordered full-size versions and walking very carefully and slowly away.

The low-down

Hearthe

Vibe Federation corner cafe serving master pastry chef Christopher Thé's beautiful native ingredient-flavoured cakes, savoury dishes, bread, cocktails and drinks.

Go-to dish(es) Baked egg and bacon tart with white beans and saltbush, followed by a slice of paperbark dacquoise and a sparking cascara iced tea.