Simply Gluten Free Mentone

If you're avoiding gluten and live around Mentone, Victoria, this family-owned bakery and café is worth a visit. Everything on the shelves is gluten-free, and the range goes well beyond the usual loaf and a lonely muffin. Bread, pastries, muffins and pies sit alongside ready-made meals, frozen goods and hot food from the warmer, with dairy-free, egg-free and vegan choices in the mix too. The tagline is "Baked Fresh Every Day", and people who shop there often talk about how freshly baked everything feels.

Coeliacs seem especially fond of the place. One local, newly diagnosed, found a jam tart and custard tart that tasted just the way she remembered them from country bakeries as a kid. Others talk about the seeded loaf, cheese sticks, cheese and bacon rolls, a proper Cornish pasty and an eclair that had one customer telling everyone to stop deliberating and just order. Sausage rolls, muffins and vanilla slice come up too, and it's hard to know what to pick when you walk in.

Custom cakes are available for celebrations. The custom cakes get a good wrap, with a gluten and dairy free chocolate mud cake and a black forest both delighting diners, and some people come back to order again for the next celebration.

The staff are a big part of the appeal. Locals describe the women behind the counter as friendly, funny and patient, and travellers heading home to Phillip Island have made a point of stopping in. Delivery gets a mention as quick and contactless, though you'll want to check the delivery terms with the bakery.

Not everyone is sold on every item. We've heard that the bread isn't to everyone's taste, that a pie and an arancini ball lacked a bit of flavour for one visitor, and that ingredient questions at the counter haven't always been answered with confidence. Still, the bakery stocks both sweet and savoury items, and the outer suburbs don't have many gluten-free options, so it's a discovery for locals seeking variety.

You can eat in, take away or pick up in store, and there's free street parking nearby plus a wheelchair-accessible entrance and car park. It's open seven days, with shorter hours on weekends, so check the hours before you head in.