Santini Italian Pastry Cafe — Restaurant in Queensland

This is an complete hidden gem - I just would not expect to find such an excellent Italian pasticceria, producing top top quality traditional Italian pastries in a seaside town in Queensland.

There's something different each day, and it's hard to choose between things like crisp sfogliatelle (5⭐), a frozen millefoglie (5⭐), and big Italian donuts filled with pistacchio crema (5⭐). Various canoli (5⭐) are great too. They also have gelati, desserts like tiramisu and rhum baba, and different traditional Italian biscuits.

Realistically, there's going to be a pretty limited native market of Italian pastry enthusiasts living in the Bay, and they could have just defaulted to selling caramel slices and brownies like everywhere else. Props to the chef for having such a love for Italian pastry to stick to tradition, refuse to compromise on quality, and delight us all. It's so popular that it looks like this corner of Queensland has developed a dedicated local following that has been well and truly converted to Italian. I certainly have. I love this place.

Indoor and outdoor seating available for eating in with a coffee. Or go to the picnic tables on the other side of the road...

Decided to pop in to treat myself after a busy morning at work, everything looked lovely but pricey. I chose an Italian style custard slice, the lady said that the one on display was for someone else but they had more out the back. So I agreed to buy one as a takeaway. After leaving the shop I discovered it was frozen! I had to drive back and return it as I didn't want to spend $10 on a small frozen cake. They should of asked me if I wanted a frozen one. They freeze their produce and are not very helpful informing you of this. Total waste of my lunch break No apology offered just a shrug and said it's the same in ten minutes if you wait. I would say fresh is different to...

Although heavily tourist-priced ($8 or $9 a pop), the pastries are of excellent quality, fresh and tasty. Although I cannot remember the (often Italian) names of each item, we tried a vanilla custard stack/slice and a pear and chocolate slice. Both were very nice. The various Cannoli (custard, Sicilian) are also really good. I will add that my wife, on a previous visit, had a sorbet which she highly recommends.

If you're in holiday mode, can justify the prices and feel like a flavoursome accompaniment to your coffee, then pay...