Lucien Baked Goods

Time Out

06-06-2025

Lucien Baked Goods is the baby of Parramatta 's most celebrated café, Circa Espresso (just a ten-minute walk away), which has won People's Choice award for Favourite Café in Time Out's Food & Drink Awards several times, including in 2025.
Lucien opened in late 2023 as a hybrid bakery-café where you can come witness the pastry wizards at work while munching on oven-fresh croissants and sipping locally roasted coffee served in beautiful rustic mugs. I highly recommend the almond croissant. Light, flaky, buttery pastry encases a dense almond filling, and it's topped with a handful of crispy almond flakes and a dusting of icing sugar.
Prime real estate is reserved in Lucien's pastry cabinet for fresh pastries and cakes, which are baked on-site multiple times during the day. If you're having lunch, grab one of the generously-packed bagels from the display, or if you're after a sweet treat, there are canelés, choux buns, seasonal tarts, danishes and Lucien's signature pistachio scroll of croissant dough, filled with pistachio cream and decorated with pistachio praline and rose petals. Good luck stopping at one.
Cakes are available whole or by the slice including a burnt Basque cheesecake, gluten-free raspberry and almond Persian love cake, Russian honey cake (medovik) and hazelnut brownie topped with gianduja.
Or make more of a meal of it by ordering a croque monsieur or madame, or a sujuk and egg wrap, off the menu. The selections lean into the Middle Eastern flavours that Circa regulars would recognise and love.
It's no surprise that coffee is Circa's locally-roasted beans (which makes arguably the best coffee in Parramatta), and there are also house-made drinks like a lemon squash, chai lattes and Egyptian iced tea.
You can take a slice of Lucien home with grab-and-go baked sourdough, baguettes and brioche; raw honeycomb; housemade chilli oil; jams and relishes.
Atmosphere-wise, this place steers away from the converted warehouse chaos and quirks of Circa Espresso – Lucien has sleek, clean lines, earthy tones of natural wood, and natural daylight spilling through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. We sit at a table on the pavement because we're there on a nice, sunny day.
The all-day bakery is backed by Circa's owner Aykut Sayan along with the café's head chef, Tom Clunie, and its pastry chef, Adeline Ribis (the café is also named after Clunie and Ribis' two children, Lucy and Bastien).