Josh M.
Yelp
I woke up one sunny, amazing, Saturday morning. Calmly made my way to Newtown for breakfast and...umm...didn't want to wait around...hrrmm...actually, sorry. That whole opening is a lie, let me start again.
I dragged my butt outta bed early in the morning (seriously, 8am on a Saturday!), did everything to avoid raising my head towards the blazing sun, jumped in the tank, flew across the coat hanger we call a bridge & tore into Newtown exclusively for the Cronuts at Brewtown Newtown (the only place I know that does them in Sydney apart from Adriano Zumbo). I crushed itty bitty bicycles on my way, parked the beastly 4x4 on the little narrow strip of tarmac know as King St, bolted across the street & down O'Connell to be greeted by a horde of hungry zombies (mostly hipsters, all with matching sunglasses...there were some 'ordinary' people too but this is Newtown after all so don't expect ordinary!).
I couldn't help but smirk when I overhead the staff telling people that it was at least a 45min wait, as I knew I would simply slice my way through the crowd to takeaway a large strong coffee & one of each cronut that was entombed in their glass counter.
I had a two minute wait for the coffee, which was no big deal as I had four pleasantly sized, magical looking, flaky cronuts in my hands. One thing that I saw happen to a few groups whilst waiting & YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO THIS, they will not seat you if the whole group is not present when they call you. You will need to wait even longer out on the street, so make sure everyone is there on time (especially important for that one friend we all have that is ALWAYS late).
The coffee wasn't bad, but definitely not strong like I had asked. I've personally had better around Sydney but would not stop from grabbing one from Brewtown if I was in the area.
Now, the particular items that made me get out of bed on a Saturday morning...the cronuts. I picked up a glazed original, jam, sugar cinnamon & chocolate. I personally found the G.O to be the best of the bunch, it was pleasantly sweet but not overboard on the sweetness. Next in line was the sugar cinnamon, which really is a great to introduce such a hybrid to those that grew up on fresh hot cinnamon donuts.
I expected to love the chocolate cronut, however my tastebuds kept being distracted by some type of candy/cake crumble stuff on top (taste like burning!). Last of the bunch was the jam, it was quite sour, a little sweet but I felt it was clashing in my mouth. I must say that I'm not a big fan of jam though, so I'd imagine that someone that is would have a very different opinion on it.
Now comparing to the zonut offering from Zumbo, I have to say I'm leaning towards Zumbo for a couple of reasons. I found the Brewtown cronuts to not be as flaky as I like, we're talking about a couple of crunchy, flaky layers compared to the satisfying, endless crunch & snap you hear when biting into a zonut. The other thing is that the Brewtown cronuts are more moist & chewy which is normally not a bad thing at all. However I found this was due to them being extremely oily & you can taste this quite distinctively when chowing down.
If you are yet to have the life altering, mind-blowing, magical, orgasmic & enlightening experience of trying a cronut, Brewtown Newtown's versions are fine to start with. They do offer more variety than Zumbo (used to do two flavours, now only one...) & they don't seem to be as limited so you can avoid the disappointment of missing out.
I'll be back at Brewtown in the future & will wait with the horde to try their expanded brekky menu. I'll also definitely give their cronuts another shot, hopefully they'll get the oil under control.