Don’t be fooled by the name of this bakery. Shadow Baking has hardly escaped the spotlight since emerging from Gelato Messina’s creative kitchen four years ago. Shadow’s latest opening inside North Adelaide’s Messina store has locals screaming for ice-cream—and pastries.

The only thing better than gelato might just be gelato plus flaky pastries fresh from the oven. That’s what Shadow Baking founders Tom Mitchell and Florian ‘Flo’ Fritsch think anyway.

Both hailing from Gelato Messina’s head chef team, the pair dreamed up the bakery idea when they were messing about in Messina’s kitchens during COVID.

“Shadow Baking is the result of what happens when you put a French-trained pastry obsessive and someone who makes desserts all day for Australia’s best gelato company together!” Tom says.

“Shadow Baking started as a side hustle in Gelato Messina kitchens off the back of Covid. We started making the kind of pastry we wanted to eat on our days off and started selling [it at] a market stall at The Cannery Markets in Sydney back in 2022.

“When a tiny store came up next to Messina’s store in Darlinghurst (Messina’s old cake making and restaurant space), we opened our first bakery and here we are.”

To kick Shadow Baking into high gear, Flo – who had been head chef at Messina for eight years – moved to Shadow to head up the operations full-time. Tom remains Messina’s executive chef, as he has been for 10 years, but is also heavily involved in all things Shadow.

Shadow Baking is known for its amazing baked items

A tasty expansion

Shadow Baking’s newest store is the highly anticipated North Adelaide store, which opened its doors on April 17. Like the Darlinghurst store in Sydney, Shadow Baking’s newest shopfront is located directly next to a Gelato Messina store, providing customers the ultimate sweet treat offering.

Shadow Baking North Adelaide is also the second location to offer a dine-in breakfast experience, and the first ever to combine elements of both Messina and Shadow Baking in one mouth-watering handcrafted product.

“The classics we’re known for are the same—Custard Tart Danish, Coconut and Pandan Brioche, focaccias, along with coffee, of course,” Flo says.

“North Adelaide gets a few things no one else does. The big one is the gelato-stuffed brioche—a freshly baked Shadow Baking brioche served with a scoop of any Messina flavour.

“There’s also a full sit-down breakfast menu with dishes like Sausage Curry with a Scotch egg, Sausage and Egg buns, Chorizo with whipped labneh and lots of rotating specials.

“You can have a savoury Shadow brekky, walk a couple of metres through the connecting door for a Messina scoop, and you’ve basically had a full meal!”

As for the bakery’s name, the inspiration came from behind-the-scenes preparation antics. The song Shadowboxin’ by Wu-Tang Clan was on full blast in the kitchen when Tom and Flo were test baking in Shadow’s early days. They say from then, the name just stuck.

Shadow’s North Adelaide store is the fourth in their national footprint, with two others located in Sydney’s Darlinghurst and Marrickville suburbs, and one in Adelaide’s Glenelg area.

In recent years, Gelato Messina has gone international with stores in Singapore and Hong Kong. While Shadow’s baked goods are still firmly on Aussie soil, the bakery is going berserk on socials and foodies can’t get enough of the sweet and savoury delights.

“Glenelg has been a great store for us since it opened in April 2025, and the response from Adelaide pretty quickly told us there was room for more than one Shadow in this city,” Tom says.

“Glenelg is a beach shop, fast, takeaway, so we wanted somewhere we could sit you down for a proper breakfast and have a Messina next door for dessert. 88 O’Connell Street gave us the heritage neighbourhood, and the rare chance to put Shadow and Messina under one roof from day one.

“Nick Palumbo (one of Gelato Messina’s owners) showed us the [North Adelaide] design and it was too good not to do – and he didn’t give us much choice! Sydney taught us how to bake at scale, how to handle a queue, and now Shadow and Messina have a side-by-side site.”

Shadow Baking and Gelato Messina are side-by-side

A delight for the eyes

To function most effectively as a “dual” Messina-Shadow operation, the site location and brief were crucial: the inspiration would come from the film setting of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the two stores were to blend seamlessly, inviting customers to feast their appetites across the whole range.

“Vie Studio, who’ve designed many Messina stores in the past took this store to a new level. [T]hey came back with woven vinyl climbing the walls, a theatrical “reception” oven at the entrance, dark wood, marble, curves and a cinematic connecting door between the two shops,” Flo says.

“Because we run a full dine-in breakfast menu, the kitchen had to be specced from scratch and we have outdoor seating and some inside Messina before they open.”

Tom and Flo say the support they’ve received from Adelaide locals – from Glenelg to Kent Town to North Adelaide – has been overwhelming.

“Most bakeries do pastry, most gelaterias do gelato; we’re one of the only places in the country where the same kitchen brain has built both, side by side, with a door between them,” Tom says.

“People have been losing their minds over the gelato-stuffed brioche—freshly baked bun meets cold gelato, sums up the whole concept. It’s also such a day-to-night concept—coffee and pastries at Shadow from 7am all the way through to scoops at 10.30pm.

“The city has shown up for us in a way we genuinely didn’t expect, and we already have a great regulars crowd at North Adelaide.”

There’s no doubt Aussies living outside of Sydney and Adelaide are eager to dig their teeth into Shadow’s pastries, not to mention a creamy scoop of gelato to top it all off too.

When asked if Shadow had anything in the works for extending their current market into other states across the country, Tom and Flo said we’ll have to wait and see.

“Right now our heads are entirely in North Adelaide but never say never!”