A humble slab of real-vanilla custard between two puff pastry sheets, topped with a zingy passionfruit glaze, has been lauded as the best vanilla slice in Sydney in this year’s delicious. 100.

Available only on weekends in Redfern and Alexandria, Good Ways Deli’s perfect, simple slice has Sydneysiders returning to the nostalgic pastry staple and realising its worthy place as an iconic Australian ritual and treat.

The vanilla slice is a polarising pastry, so simple in its elements and yet so often just-OK. But hardened fans of the vanilla slice will scout out the best of its kind in country bakeries and suburban cafes, and swear they have found the pinnacle, until they find another to top it.

The glistening slab found at Good Ways Deli, an Australian sandwich shop doing elevated takes on the nostalgic food many Australians may have grown up eating, has been crowned Sydney’s best in the newly released delicious.100, which sets out to showcase the most extraordinary examples of the food we love.

Related news: View the delicious 100 and vote for Good Ways Deli’s vanilla slice here

At Good Ways Deli the vanilla slice is a weekend-only offering for $8. It’s worth it.

Tom Pye, co-owner of the popular deli, says a vanilla slice should be simple. “It’s good the way it’s always been made and we haven’t tried to change it. But the components are better.”

Here the vanilla slice sits around two inches thick, pastry cream holding up the flaky pastry top, and each large rectangle slice is glazed with a shimmering passionfruit icing, tart and sweet at once.

To eat a vanilla slice is to commit to the mess of it. A bouncy vanilla pastry cream layer squeezes out of the mille-feuille pastry, the “thousand-sheets” that top and tail the slice, whichever way you bite. The thin sheets of crisp pastry break and flake and the dusting of icing sugar puffs as you breathe and stretch your bite.

Oh, but the bliss. The biscuity pastry, the vanilla cream, the contrast of textures and classic, simple flavours; the best vanilla slice is the sum of its perfect parts.

A debate rages amongst fans of the vanilla slice over which form is best. The French creamy, custard variety versus the thickened Australian classic with custard so firm you leave your teeth marks in it. Too often cornflour is heavily used in a bid to set the cloying custard, when egg yolks would have done
better. The undercooked nature of the flour can put the texture off, turning the custard rubbery and the result befitting the popular tuck-shop-era nickname of the vanilla slice; the “snot block”.

Comparisons are often drawn between the uniquely Australian vanilla slice and the mille feuille as it is called in France, or Napoleon in North America, which is three layers of puff pastry with alternating layers of pastry cream. Sometimes it’s finished with a dusting of icing sugar, sometimes with sliced almonds or pastry crumbs. Others top it with a smooth and shiny glaze.

At Good Ways Deli, Pye says the custard for their winning vanilla slice is made a day in advance, left to set in the fridge atop the buttery puff pastry. They make their vanilla slice on a flat tray, so it needs to stand up on its own, the custard thick with egg yolks to hold, and with no cornflour. The custard is not
too sweet, and vanilla adds a depth of flavour and richness in place of excess sugar.

“There’s a balance needed in a vanilla slice,” says Pye. “The custard should be firmer to create volume and so the slice holds together when you eat it. The pastry should be golden and biscuity, and then there’s that quite sweet and tart, almost zingy passionfruit icing on top.”

Admirers of this classic Australian pastry have to wait for weekends to pick up a vanilla slice from Good Ways Deli, which has a shop in Redfern as well as Alexandria.

“We sell one slab, or about 18 slices, in each shop per day over the weekend. But it’s first in, best served. And sometimes someone will come in and get four slices in one go. Vanilla slices are a bit like that, they have their fans,” he laughs.

Related news: A viral video has confirmed it, we’ve been cutting vanilla slice wrong