Talking days after opening the new venture on Rose Street in Fitzroy, just 200metres from the famed Lune mothership, Reid recalls the moment a New York recommendation made her look again at the cruller, a deep-fried pastry staple, still relatively unknown in Australia. 

“This one was otherworldly,” says Reid of that 2017 moment. “Piped quite fat and as such it had the crust on the outside but the choux pastry on the inside was still almost weblike, custardy and I just wasn’t expecting it. Biting through the crust, and then the glaze: almost Krispy Kreme like, where you bite in and the surface of it is set in a skin but when you bite it forms like little cracks and it breaks. Everything about it was unexpected and delicious. I felt like I was having a real New York moment.”

An experience with a lasting effect it was just over a year ago that Reid started to develop her own cruller recipe and technique, having debated the idea of a pop up with her brother Cam Reid and Nathan Toleman, both partners in Lune. “We were seeing how people were really reaching out to Lune [during covid) because they wanted an affordable luxury that reminded them of their everyday life. We thought maybe we could bring another little affordable luxury to Melbourne.”

“I went over to my mum and dad’s house one day, before we went into a hard lockdown, and said to mum I want to make crullers for afternoon tea,” says Reid. “I think she was a bit annoyed because I made the kitchen really oily.” From that initial test batch there were secret after dark test sessions at Lune that even Reid’s staff didn’t know about. 

So what should you expect at Moon? Reid says that crullers are the polar opposite to the elegant, refined and technical croissant from which she’s made her name. Crullers being a “naughty, greasy, sticky, custardy, crunchy treat.”

“We’re keeping the glazes simple and classic,” she says. “I don’t want to bring crazy flavours. I want to bring cinnamon sugar, vanilla glaze and coffee glaze, all of the classic flavours that given a choice we’re all going to gravitate towards.”

“I think it’s a really close representation of what I experienced in New York,” she says of the cruller she’s now developed. “But I think over time as well, the Moon product will evolve and become its own thing. I’m certainly not going to say it’s a New York style cruller, it’s a Moon cruller, inspired by experiences that I’ve had at my favourite place in New York, Daily Provisions.”

Reid is clear on one simple instruction. “We’re putting fresh crullers into everyone’s hands, and for me that’s a really critical part of eating a cruller. It’s deep-fried, you eat it as fresh as possible, so I’d recommend eating it right then and there. Don’t take it home and three hours later take a photo of it and put it on Instagram, then eat it and go, oh it wasn’t very fresh.”

While Moon has been long in gestation, and Reid says that they’ve been wanting to open for months, she’s not sure how long it will last. “It might be around for three months or twelve months or four weeks. If the demand looks like it’s going to have a bit of longevity, we’ll find a permanent space to move it to.” At the moment Moon is, says Reid, “around for a good time not a long time.”