Popular South American bakery Dulce Bakehouse arrives in Southbank

The bakery known for its South American pastries and unique take on vanilla slice has moved into Southbank with Tribu Coffee at 109 Clarendon St.

Owner Eddie Segovia said he and his wife and business partner Gaby tried to open the new location quietly at first.

“We were scared of how busy it was going to be, so we tried to do a soft opening,” Eddie told Southbank News.

And they were right to be wary – Eddie says the Southbank store’s popularity so far has been “insane”.

The new location’s instant popularity is hardly surprising considering the fact that the bakery’s original Delahey location and Essendon outpost (dubbed Dulce Chico) have been using a numbered ticketing system on weekends to manage their perpetual queues for years.

This is even before the business garnered high praise in the Herald Sun and The Age this year for its vanilla slice, deemed Melbourne’s best by food critic Dani Valent.

Eddie, who is of Chilean and Uruguayan descent, said the bakery had a large following within the local South American community, who had been eagerly awaiting the new store’s opening.

“The first day was great. People were really anxious to have us here,” he said.

“It got busy straight away, because people were waiting for us to open.”

The menu includes classic savoury and sweet South American pastries as well as desserts you’d find in a typical country bakery – but always with Eddie’s own unique spin.

There’s a not-so-secret sauce that’s – literally – at the middle of it all: dulce de leche, made in-house.

This South American caramel is made by slowly cooking sweetened condensed milk.

At Dulce Bakehouse, dulce de leche is piped into Argentinian croissants, sandwiched between traditional Chilean pastries like chilenitos and milhojas, spread between the layers of the signature vanilla slice and piped into tarts and profiteroles.

For savoury snacks, there are empanadas with fillings like chicken and mushroom or beef with Dulce’s special house spice blend.

There is also an impressive range of croissants on offer, both savoury and sweet.

For Eddie, the croissant has been one of the most rewarding dishes to perfect.

“The satisfaction after creating the croissant … I have literally practised for years, eight years of trying and trying, and when I finally got it, it was such a relief and I felt so proud,” he said.

Seeing customers happy and loving the product, that gives me a lot of joy.

“The end product makes me so proud and is so satisfying for me. That’s what drives me.”

At Dulce’s first two locations, the croissants flew under the radar compared to other more popular menu items, but Southbankers are loving them.

Since the Southbank store opened, Dulce has started making around 1800 croissants a week.

“That’s because they’re really appreciated in Southbank. I think people appreciate a high-quality croissant,” Eddie said. “I use milk, and I use eggs in the dough, so it’s more complicated, but the flavour is quite unique and it’s a bit richer.”

Eddie said that when he’s developing recipes, “my imagination runs wild. My taste buds are kind of my best friend. I don’t follow recipes. I have epiphanies. I have moments where I think, ‘oh my god, this would go so cool with this product’ and I just try it.”

“Most of our catalogue, we make it up ourselves. And I think that’s what makes us unique, that we invent in the moment, we just trial and error. You don’t find our products anywhere else.”

Serendipitously, the opening of Dulce’s second store in Essendon was exactly two years prior to the opening of the Southbank store, to the day.

“The intention was always to come to the city,” Eddie said.

“Our growth has been progressive but slow because we’ve grown really slowly out of word of mouth, rather than just the hype of marketing. Now we’ve got the hype, but we’ve been doing the groundwork for almost nine years,” he said.

“We’ve been super busy for a very long time … now it’s become insane, but we’ve got the background, we’ve done the hard yards to get to this.”

Eddie calls the decision to move in with Tribu Coffee in its spacious shop on the corner of Clarendon St and City Rd a “no brainer”.

“We’re really happy with the way things are going. We’re grateful that Southbank has welcomed us in a really cool fashion, and we’re really excited to be there.” •