From the outside you wouldn’t know it’s open. The maroon roller door is down and the front door (which still has an old “office hours” decal on the window) is locked up with bars. But poke your head around the side and the line of locals milling about cradling fresh loaves of bread is the giveaway (well, apart from the huge Falco sign). Falco Bakery has arrived in Collingwood – again.
“It’s been genuinely interesting looking at the Instagram comments from people saying, ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’, or ‘welcome to Collingwood’, and I’m like, ‘we’ve been here’,” laughs manager Jo Watson. But she’s been enjoying acquainting herself with new customers from the area, as well as loyal regulars from Smith Street. “A kid on his bike rode past the other day and was like, ‘fuck yeah, Falco!’”
Since opening on Smith Street in 2019, the bakery has become an integral part of the strip, with lines out the door most lunchtimes. But it’s not just the shopfront filling up; the team – led by head baker and co-owner Christine Tran – has long needed more back-of-house production space for their sought-after loaves, cheeseburger pies, cardamom buns, and peanut-butter-and-miso cookies.
Enter venue number two, which opened in a former barbeque restaurant on Langridge Street this week. The warehouse-style space – designed by Studio Wonder – is perfectly at home in the industrial backstreets of Collingwood. There’s no seating room, but production space has almost tripled, says co-owner Casey Wall (who’s also part of the crew behind Carlton’s Capitano and Fitzroy’s Bar Liberty).
The very large, open kitchen – where most of the Falco baking will now occur – doubles their capacity. It includes a temperature-controlled pastry room and a walk-in freezer, plus two provers, two combi ovens, and one “huge” bread oven. The added space will allow Tran and her team to eventually introduce some new menu items (hello, bagel sandwiches) and bring back old favourites (including the return of the kouign-amann).
“For so long [at Smith Street] it’s been a chore to get by. There was no space to do anything,” Wall tells Broadsheet. “Some days you wanted to go in and help and there was nowhere to stand. So the rate at which we put on new items kind of slowed down … So it’s really fun to have the capacity to introduce new items and more produce-driven things that we actually have the space to take on.”
For now though, the team is bringing the current Smith Street menu over to Langridge Street. “We’re going to baby step into it instead of trying to unload four or five new dishes at once,” says Wall.
When Broadsheet visits, there’s a toasted sesame boule, an oat porridge loaf, a country loaf and a whole wheat one available to take home (the latter three are available in bagel form, too). The god-tier chicken and egg salad sandwiches are there too.
In the pie warmer, there’s a spinach, feta and ricotta roll, a buffalo chicken pie, a steak and cheese one, a pork and fennel sausage roll, and the signature Rockwell pie (named and modeled after the cheeseburger from Wall’s previous venture, Rockwell and Sons).
To drink, there’s espresso or filter coffee made with Falco’s house blend, roasted by Tim Varney (of Stella Coffee). Pair it with a new, seasonal fig danish or a crowd-favourite cookie with peanut butter and house-fermented miso.
Falco Bakery
156-158 Langridge Street, Collingwood
Hours:
Daily 8am–2pm
falcobakery.com
@falcobakery
02 Aug 2023
02 Aug 2023
01 Aug 2023
01 Aug 2023