G'Day, Mate!

Here’s my Mom. She’s 92 years old and lives in Marietta, Ga., about a half hour northwest of Atlanta. When I visited this month, we indulged in one of our favorite activities: we jumped in the car and headed to the Australian Bakery in the restored historic town center named Marietta Square. In the center of the square is Glover Park, nicely landscaped with a fountain, gazebo and flowering crape myrtle and okame cherry trees. The surrounding streets have late 19th and early 20th century buildings that house specialty boutiques, restaurants, and antique shops.

For being in the heart of the south, it’s a pretty international place. If you want to eat there’s authentic Turkish, Slovakian, Italian, Celtic, and Cajun food all within a three-block radius, But our favorite place is the Australian Bakery which offers 16 varieties of meat pies, including an English pork pie, a traditional Cornish Pastie, curry lamb, and the basic Aussie meat pie — savory ground sirloin and seasoned gravy baked in a flaky pastry crust. We always order the same thing: I get the curried chicken pie, and mom gets the sausage baked in a pastry roll.

But if we had to tell the truth, the main reason we go eat meat pies is so we can have dessert. Lamingtons! These are light and airy sponge cakes, cut in chunky squares, dipped in chocolate, and then covered in finely shredded coconut. Lamingtons are such objects of bliss that I dream about them when I’m away. The bakery also serves other traditional Australian desserts, like Cherry Ripe (shortbread with maraschino cherries and coconut filling and chocolate topping) and Vanilla Slice (vanilla custard sandwiched between flaky puff pastry with an icing topping). But Lamingtons are what we love.