This family-run cafe and pasticceria is an old Italian soul worth visiting​on April 12, 2025 at 2:00 pm

Where is the beating heart of Sydney’s Italian cafe and restaurant community? The answer used to be Leichhardt, where up until the early 2000s, the main strip of Norton Street buzzed with a cornucopia of traditional pasticceria, pasta and pizza palaces, and coffee bars serving heart-detonating espresso in two-gulp tazzina cups.

But rising rents, generation shifts and the demise of restaurant hub The Forum, not to mention two decades of metered parking, have dampened Leichhardt’s buon divertimento. And, with that, its mantle as the hot spot for crispy, doughy, creamy, fruity and custard-filled Italian pastries.

Think cannoli, sfogliatelle, zeppole and bomboloni – that cavalcade of baked goods stretching from crispy curly pastry filled with sweet ricotta cream to buxom, sugar-dusted fried dough balls injected with strawberry jam. All washed down with crema-topped ristretto or, come the evening, a liquor-edged caffe corretto as the rum-soaked tiramisu slid headily into view.

Of course, such delights still exist in Leichhardt, but there’s strong competition in Haberfield, Wareemba and Five Dock, plus more recent options in Alexandria. Meanwhile, in the city’s north-west, a taste of sweet-toothed Italian cafe buzz sits in a stretch of quiet shops.

Fronted by a gleaming blue-and-white tiled frontage and massive windows showcasing pastries, bread, pizza, pizzette and filled panini, Maggio’s is a traditional family-run Italian cafe and pasticceria established by three brothers, Andrew, Carlo and Christian Maggio.

The first Maggio’s opened in Cammeray in 1998; the North Ryde store launched just six months ago. It’s a slice of Italy levered nimbly into an everyday suburban shopping strip, and on a crisp weekday morning, the store thrums with the energy of a Roman town square waking to the day.

Locals lining up at the long glass front counter are ordering sticky, still-warm hot cross buns and three flavours of maritozzi, the fat-sliced icing-dusted dough buns filled here with raspberry, chocolate or plain cream. Nearby, there are pert chantilly cream-filled sponge cakes, known as tetta della monaca (translating, saucily, to “nun’s breasts”).

Tables inside and out teem with pre-commuters and chattering school kids from the primary school across the road, the very place the three Ryde-raised Maggio brothers were taught as children. It’s barely 8am, but mouths left and right are smudged with icing sugar, jam, chocolate and custard. Laps are scattered with golden flakes. People walk to buses and school with just-baked croissants, custard tarts and delicate sfogliatelle in their hands.

Maggio’s also has a substantial sit-down breakfast and lunch area with tables both tiny and mammoth and a wall crammed with framed mid-century poster art, Rat Pack portraits, and photos of family members spanning generations and backyards in Italy and Australia. Aproned staff provide old-school hospitality, ushering customers to chairs as they whizz between tables with unruffled charm.

The table menu offers Italian breakfast and lunch standards, from the chilli kick of picante scrambled eggs served with grilled broccolini and feta to the day’s pizza al taglio, six traditional pastas and a range of sandwiches including a very fine cotoletta di pollo, the chicken schnitzel layered with pickled fennel, green slaw and Calabrian chilli sauce on a toasted brioche bun.

You can’t go wrong with Italian eggs, a 26-year staple of the Cammeray store and cooked from the Maggio brothers’ grandmother’s recipe. Andrew Maggio recalls childhood Sunday mornings savouring the dish’s eggs, poached in a tomato and basil sauce, before wiping the plate clean with bread – nowadays door stopper-sized toasted ciabatta slices. Another longtime menu staple, the Cammeray Starter, is a precise and pretty layering of cherry tomatoes, smashed avocado and feta on soy linseed sourdough.

The new Maggio’s feels fresh-faced in quiet North Ryde, but its packed tables, warm service and the bonanza of traditional pastries signal an old Italian soul worth visiting.

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