La Renaissance Café Pâtisserie, The Rocks

On a fresh morning in Sydney I met with Couchsurfer (also known as, complete stranger) Mr G outside the Sydney Town Hall. We visited the Sydney fish market which seemed rather dull in my opinion. Sure there were fish...and a forklift....but there was nothing happening. Considering I was expecting something similar to the Hamburger Fischmarkt (Hamburg fish market), I was very disappointed. The Hamburger Fischmarkt is held each Sunday from 05:00-09:30 and there you will find loud stall owners making jokes and doing little 'shows' in order to attract customer attention, a collection of different fish for sale, many different flavoured gherkins in big barrels and a fish auction hall with music inside. You'll also find all the intoxicated party go-ers from the near by Reeperbahn (the biggest party street in Hamburg) who stayed up all night just to have a Fischbroetchen (fish roll) for breakfast.

Fischbroetchen/fish roll. It is fish, in a roll with your choice of a slice of cucumber or a slice of onion. Sounds boring but it is really good

Disappointed with the fish market, we walked to The Rocks where we found the pretty but busy patisserie, La Renaissance. Inside you will find a long cake display filled with colourful, happy cakes, pastries, savoury items and treats.

Part of the cake display

We each ordered a hot chocolate to quench our thirst having walked quite a way. Mr G ordered a  mille-feuille from the cake display and I ordered an orange and saffron macaron. We made our way to the back of the patisserie where we found a cosy shaded court yard to sit in.

The court yard filled with mostly non-sun smart people. I was not sun smart and in exchange for my stupidity, received some sun burn on my face

Hot chocolate, $4

The hot chocolate was pleasant but I did need to mix it up, as you can see from the above photo, all the chocolate was down the bottom of the glass. It was actually chocolately and I was pleased with it.

Mille-feuille, either $6 or $7 (I do not remember; there are different prices for eat in and take away)

Mr G was very pleased with his mille-feuille, which is basically a fancy vanilla slice. It looks good; you want to eat it and then have another one! There was a decent amount of tasty, soft vanilla crème pâtissière between the layers of delicate but flaky puff pastry.

 Macaron, $2.50

The orange/purple macaron was also beautiful to look at. It was soft yet chewy and the filling was not foamy. It had a wonderful orange flavour but I did not notice any saffron...though I still do not know what saffron tastes like, so a bit hard for me to pick it out.

I really enjoyed it here. The food was pleasing, the court yard was very welcoming and cosy and the staff were quite friendly. A perfect place for morning tea. I returned the next week but was disappointed to find the patisserie was closed for renovations. No cake for me:(

As I mentioned vanilla slice in this entry, you may be interested to know that there is a Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph competition!

What you need to know:

Where: 47 Argyle Street, The Rocks, Sydney NSW

When: 08:00 - 18:00 each day

Other: After some cake, you can walk down to the harbour and watch the buskers. You could also go to the Rocks Market, on Friday-Sunday

Website <- click