This West Pymble patisserie is making cake so good people are flying in from across the world to try it
Owner embraces the “bizarre” phenomenon after a viral post leads to queues down the street for his twist on a French classic.
Melissa Mantle
April 17, 2025
A Japonaise-style cake at neighbourhood favourite Du Plessy Pralin and Otello, in West Pymble, is attracting queues of sweet-toothed customers day-in day-out after a Chinese social media influencer visited the patisserie with a regular customer and posted a video about it on Red Note. The video, posted in March, soon went viral.
In the video, the influencer says that he came to Australia “just for cakes”. After purchasing a box of pastries from another bakery, Max meets Shore Shore local Margot on a train and they share his sweets.
“I like food with grip, something which goes…’wow’”, Margot says in the video, before recommending he go grab a cake from Otellos.
“I have been going to him for decades,” Margot says, referring to Paul Adam, the second-generation owner of Otellos. She describes to Max how Adam studied in France and only uses the best ingredients, like Belgian chocolate.
Adam described the ensuing phenomenon as “bizarre”. The bakery has seen an influx of Chinese visitors who say they have flown to Sydney just to try the cake, which briefly became a problem when “professional shoppers” began coming in to buy cakes and then on-sell them at a profit on WeChat. “We put a stop to it,” Adam said.
A Japonaise cake is a French pastry consisting of layered almond meringue discs between coffee-flavoured buttercream.
Adam’s twist on the classic recipe pairs dark chocolate mousse between layers of almond and hazelnut meringue, finished with a cocoa powder stencil of two rosellas on top. And it’s also gluten-free. It’s been their most popular cake since he started making it in 1988, almost forty years ago.
Adam undertook pastry training in France, inheriting his father Marcel’s passion for the trade. Marcel was a master pastry chef who trained in Switzerland.
Since the Red Note post, he sells 100 a day, up from 100 a week. Leading up to Easter, the team makes 4500+ chocolate eggs and bunnies.
The now-famous cake comes in four sizes: extra small for $50, small for $58, medium for $68 and large for $75. You can browse the whole selection of cakes here.
