It may have a limited product offering and limited trading hours, but Melbourne’s newest small-batch viennoiserie is hot and in demand.

Monforte Viennoiserie is a recently-launched small-batch pasticceria in Carlton North that creates European-inspired seasonal pastries and jams.

Monforte is owned and operated by Giorgia McAllister Forte, a pastry chef of ten years. Giorgia’s career began in London at Mark Hix’s Oyster & Chop House before she moved to Melbourne and worked with Boris Portnoy to set up All Are Welcome, developing a love for working with viennoiserie and watching the bakery grow to become a well-loved local institution serving two communities.

Giorgia says Monforte Viennoiserie is driven in part by her Italian baking and ice-cream heritage.

“My maternal family, who originated from the hamlet of Mortale – later Monforte – in the Lazio region of Italy, opened the first Forte’s Ice Cream Parlour on Brighton seafront in Sussex, England in 1932.”

Monforte’s pastries and fruit jams are created to change with the seasons, making the most of produce when it’s at its best and most flavourful; indulging in bright stone fruits and berries when they appear in summer, and leaning on the abundance of apples, pears and citrus in winter.

Ingredients are sourced as locally as possible, with fruits and vegetables procured from Victorian farms, butter from LardAss; a producer on the Bellarine Peninsula and sustainably grown, organic flours from New South Wales.

Open Fridays and Saturdays from 8.30am-12.30pm, products including chestnut-ginger brownies, welsh rarebits and guanciale and parmesan croissants sell out daily and early.