Designed for mornings

Some cafes are rooms that serve food. A few are places you would go just to sit in. When Time Out named Tarte its best bakery pick on the Gold Coast, the line its editors reached for was about the room as much as the pastry: “Hamptons cool meets Parisian elegance”. That mix is not an accident, and it is not one room. It is two venues, designed differently on purpose.

Burleigh: the Parisian corner

The Burleigh bakery sits on the corner of the Gold Coast Highway at 1748, and it runs on Parisian energy. Marble, brass, cabinets of tartes and viennoiserie stacked like a patisserie window, the smell of three-day croissant dough coming off the ovens from 6:30am. It is busy on purpose. You come for the counter theatre, a New York style bagel wrapped in paper, a cruller with your coffee, and the hum of a room where everything on display was made metres away that morning.

Currumbin: the Hamptons beach house

The Beach House is the exhale. White timber, linen, sea light, and four spaces that each do one thing well. The Cafe sits directly on the sand of Currumbin Creek, walk-in and dog-friendly from 6:30am. The Restaurant looks over the water for a longer brunch. The Tea Garden is a garden room of lavender and gardenias built for high tea. The Hideout, above it all with water views through a 100-year-old fig tree, takes the private occasions. You can arrive salty from a swim or dressed for a baby shower and there is a corner of the building that fits.

Atmosphere you can actually eat in

Pretty rooms are common. Pretty rooms with a serious kitchen are not. The same bakers supply both venues daily, the coffee is our exclusive house blend from Parallel Roasters, and the menus change with the seasons. That is the whole idea: the room gets you in the door, the food is why the room is full by eight.

Tarte Bakery & Cafe. 1748 Gold Coast Highway, Burleigh Heads QLD 4220.

Tarte Beach House. Shop 1, 2-4 Thrower Drive, Currumbin QLD 4223.