Cold winter days like today make me just want to snuggle up under a doona binge-watching TV series and eating comfort food.
Ah, comfort food – the stuff that takes us back to our childhood – when treats from the bakery were vanilla slices and jam tarts with not a sniff of salted caramel in sight. As for school lunches, it was a special day when you were allowed to order a basic meat pie for lunch. With tomato sauce, of course.
So you imagine my delight when daughter Veronica took up an apprenticeship this year at Brighton’s oldest bakery – WILD HOLLY. Now this is a store where baking traditionalists will be in pure heaven. It’s been running since 1937 and while much has changed over the years, what comes out of the kitchen still has lashings of good old-fashioned quality and style.
Come with me and I’ll take you on a trip down the foodie world’s memory lane. But be warned – you’ll be drooling.
Owner and head baker Brett O’Callaghan says WILD HOLLY is not only Brighton’s oldest bakery, but the second oldest business in the suburb overall. His father, Brian, began as an apprentice baker with the first owner, Mr Perry, as a teenager. No one can remember Mr Perry’s first name – apparently he was never called anything else.
While the shop has moved from several locations over the years, it’s been in its current position at 389 Bay Street, Brighton, for the past forty years. Brett has been at the helm for about ten years and we chatted about how the store has maintained its success.
JEN: I guess a lot of Wild Holly’s appeal comes from the fact that you still carry a lot of traditional cakes people can’t find anywhere else?
BRETT: Yes, we do a lot of older-style cakes, biscuits and pies – traditional stuff that we make on the premises. We make everything here. There’s only one biscuit we out-source and we make just under 200 lines.
BRETT: We have eleven staff with four bakers out the back, including myself and the rest are shop staff. I trained under Dad. Left school and didn’t know what I wanted to do so Dad said, ‘You can’t be a bum and come and work for me.’ So I did and eventually fell in love with it. Did a four-year-apprenticeship then worked at several other places but came back and managed the shop for a couple of years with Dad but that caused a few hiccups because we had some different ideas about how to do things. Then I went and opened up my own bakery in Hampton for twelve years, then moved to Sydney for ten years then came back and bought this off my father and have been here ever since.
JEN: Was you Dad a hard taskmaster?
BRETT: Oh yes, he was. He had high standard and an ‘It’s my way or the highway’ work ethic. He was President of the Bakers Association of Australia and went overseas, representing Australia in various competitions. And he still offers advice.
JEN: What drew you back to the business?
BRETT: Basically dad was getting older and wanted to sell. I wanted to keep it going too so bought it from him and it’s been mine ever since.
JEN: Do you ever think about updating the style of cakes and pastries?
BRETT: I like to keep it as traditional as possible, using the recipes and the old-style way they’re made. We do make some new things – especially because of the cooking shows – and will give a few things a crack for a while but our clientele prefer the traditional stuff. The older-style biscuits are extremely popular. And the kids love the cupcakes and the older customers love the old-fashioned sponge cakes.
JEN: I love the cupcakes! Do you vary the designs?
BRETT: Yep, we do pigs and cats, frogs, faces. Easter we do little chickens and at Christmas we do reindeer and snowmen, then ghosts for Halloween, so there’s a bit of variety.
BRETT: Yes, we do Christmas puddings and cakes. We even started up Christmas cooking classes last year that were really popular, so we’ll start them up even earlier this year, around September or October.
JEN: How have your worked in such business for so many years with so much lovely food around you and not become fat?
Wild Holly is famous for its quality pies and sausage rolls
BRETT: (laughs) Well I was very fat once, but decided I couldn’t go on like that so started physically training a lot – running and swimming and bike-riding – so that helped.
The cake Ronnie promises she’ll make for me one day!!
BRETT: Oh, yes, I have to. I need to try everything. I mean, if an apprentice puts too much salt in something – which doesn’t happen a lot – I need to know. So I need to check the flavours.
Of course Brett would NEVER be speaking about Veronica, because it seems likes she’s doing pretty well. Most importantly, she loves her work – even though she starts before dawn. For us, it’s always a great day when she brings home extras to sample. Especially the meat pies! Now that’s something I can never say NO to.
So there you have it. If you’re looking for some respite from all those high falutin cooking shows and fancy pants restaurants and are hankering for a taste of the best from yesteryear – now you know where to go. Yep, Wild Holly. Still serving it up as good as it was nearly eighty years ago. YUM!
FOR ENQUIRIES, PHONE WILD HOLLY ON 9596 4915 or visit the shop at 389 Bay Street, Brighton.
Our daughter, Veronica, recently turned 18. (Yes, yes, of course I was a child bride…) And while her birthdays have been cause for much celebration over the years, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this one.
It’s not that I was worried about Ronnie. As I wrote in a Blog not so long ago, her Saffy-like tendancies mean she doesn’t drink alcohol nor did she plan to on her 18th. But she DID want a party. And these days, an 18th is a seriously tricky event.
Particularly because Corey Worthington wrecked the plans of millions of teenagers when he held that impromptu party at his parent’s home while they were away… You know the rest. About 500 feral youths trashed his home and the neighbourhood.
So forevermore, parents will be haunted by that story, fearing the worst when their own offspring plan an 18th celebration. Like me.
The biggest issue is alcohol. Whoever is celebrating their 18th, will no doubt have many guests who aren’t yet at the legal drinking age. So how can you, as a parent, monitor who is and who is not allowed to drink grog at a party? The laws have changed, so that if you are found to be serving a minor alcohol, (including those with fake ID) you can be fined or/and potentially sued. Even if the party is in your own home…
My biggest tip for parents of younger teenagers, is to start talking about the fact that you WON’T be throwing a party for their 18th NOW. Get in early. It’s just TOO damn hard. Give them money, send them on a holiday, buy them a car – just DON’T hold a party. Here’s why.
For starters, it’s impossible to find a venue. If you don’t want to hold the party in your own home – and who would with the threat of social networking sending a locust swarm of rampaging youths to your house within minutes – then good luck trying to find a place that will. We rang restaurants, function venues, the council and even the local RSL. While our initial enquiries were warmly received, as soon as I mentioned the dreaded birthday age number – EIGHTEEN – the phone line went dead. No one wants to take the risk.
In our case, we got lucky. We booked a local church hall and paid the deposit before one of the senior vestry members rang me, spluttering with concern, that we were staging a… SHOCK, HORROR – 18th!!! Turns out there’d been some miscommunication along the way and the lovely lady who took our booking, had no idea 18th birthdays were considered such a dangerous risk. As we had paid our deposit and sent out invitations, the booking had to be honoured. Lucky us.
Ronnie with some of her guests arriving at the party
Then there’s a myriad of organisational tasks ahead. Here’s a quick checklist that might help:
1. Notify your local police about the party with the necessary details.
2. If you can afford it, hire a couple of security guards as an extra precaution against gatecrashers. We decided not to take any chances and did.
3. Have a thorough guest list and make sure those invited know they are not allowed to bring along uninvited friends.
4. Make sure there’s plenty of bottled water and soft drink available, as well as alcohol. And food!
5. Rather than alco-pop bottled drinks – favoured by lots of girls – organise a slurpy machine so you can add you own alcohol. It’s cheaper, plus you only need add a very small amount of grog to help prevent anyone over-indulging. (sneaky, huh?)
6. Organise wristbands for those that CAN drink alcohol to help bar staff or friends serving beverages, to keep it legal.
7. Call on family and friends to help on the night. The more back up you have, the better.
8. Save money on a tiered birthday-cake display. Popular cupcake stores often hire out cake stands for $30 a pop. Buy your own on-line for between $30 and $50 and you’ll have one for keeps. I bought the Giant Cupcake on the top but then saved money by making the actual cupcakes. Okay, I ‘fess up – I used packet mix from the supermarket – but still a helluva lot cheaper than the cake shop versions. The pale lilac icing was challenging… Try mixing blue and red food colouring, but go easy on the blue.
9. Organise as many games and activities as possible to distract the party crowd from grog being the focus. Fletch was a star and sorted Table Hockey and Foosball machines that were really popular – especially earlier on before the mob worked up the courage to hit the dance floor.
10. Hire a Photo Booth. This was the BIGGEST hit on the night. Again, this genius idea came from Fletch, who sourced ours from the Australian Photo Booth Company. They also provide an assistant to help, plus a range of goofy hats, glasses and fancy dress paraphernalia to give endless hours of dress-up entertainment.
Doubles are made of all the photos, so that copies can be put into an album for the birthday person at the end of the night – a fantastic momento from the evening. Even better, it arrived earlier in the day, giving our family loads of laughs taking practice shots before the party. I even managed to get in a bunny-ears shot with Ronnie. Which is just as well, because I wasn’t allowed in the main party room on the night unless I was bearing food… (Mothers are SO embarrassing.)
11. Book a GOOD DJ. I had no idea about DJs, but after talking to my niece Charlie, who knows far more about teen parties than me, I learnt there are plenty of local types who don’t cost a bomb but do a great job. So I took her advice, (about who was the most popular on the scene in our area) and it worked a treat. Again, more dancing means less drinking.
12. Worry less. You’d be surprised how well behaved our teenagers are. It’s quite shocking, really. No one vomited, no one threw any punches and I didn’t even see ONE messy drunk. Although that could be because I wasn’t allowed in the room much…
In fact, the most risqué behaviour I came across was when I flicked through the photo booth shots the next day. There WAS a little bit of random booth snogging… (Thank God – they ARE normal.)
And even though I DID worry too much, and Fletch and I worked our butts off cleaning up that messy hall with the help of my Mum and step-father, Ken, till TWO THIRTY in the morning, there was THAT smile on the face of our gorgeous daughter all night that made it completely worthwhile. In a word – incandescent.
