From Michelin Stars to Choux Pastry: The Man Who Brought the Éclair to Brisbane

In April 2020, as the world went quiet, a Russian-born pastry chef in Byron Bay made a batch of éclairs and put them on Instagram. Nearly 100 orders arrived in a day. Five years, one Byron Bay patisserie, and one Newstead shopfront later, Pavel Stolarsky is still making éclairs — and still convinced Brisbane has no idea what it's been missing.

From Russia, With Flour

Pavel Stolarsky was born in Russia and left his hometown twenty years ago, embarking on a slow, deliberate migration across the world — Israel, Canada, the UK, and eventually Australia. When he arrived in 2016, he knew almost immediately he wasn't leaving. "It's a beautiful country in terms of nature, the ocean, the sunshine," he says. "The lifestyle is great. I knew straight away I wanted to stay and make my life here."

He'd spent years working as a chef before Australia, but it was London that shaped him most. Pavel trained under Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing in two Michelin-starred kitchens, working the pastry section in both. The experience was exacting — he describes it as a kind of culinary military service.

"Organisation, cleaning, timing — all of that," he says. "I've never been scared to work in any other kitchen since." But more than discipline, what stayed with him was confidence. "Being who you are. Not being scared of what you do. That's the main thing I took from it."

When he arrived in Australia, that confidence met a quieter reality. Classical pastry wasn't easy to find work in. He spent time in restaurants and bakeries, learning bread, picking up new skills, but always looking for the pastry chef role that never quite materialised. "Australia is not so much about pastry," he says. "Lots of bakeries, but not many places doing what I do. In the end, COVID gave me the opportunity to create my own job."

One Hundred Orders on Day One

Eclair at the Bay was born in Byron Bay in April 2020, in the first quiet weeks of a world that had suddenly stopped. Pavel didn't want to sit and wait. So he made éclairs.

His partner Mary — a brand designer with a sharp eye for beauty and a gift for storytelling — pushed the idea out on social media ahead of Mother's Day. They offered a trio box: chocolate, vanilla, lemon. Delivered from home, across the Northern Rivers. No shop, no commercial kitchen — just the two of them, the pastries, and an Instagram post.

They received almost 100 orders on the first day.

"Five of my friends with five different cars, we drove all over Byron Bay delivering éclairs," Pavel laughs. "It was crazy. But very exciting."

From that day, something took hold. They set up at local markets every week, rain or shine. Profiteroles were added, then tarts, then celebration cakes. Slowly, quietly, they became part of the Byron Bay community. Croquembouches arrived as wedding centrepieces. Mini éclairs were passed between speeches. Dessert tables made people stop mid-conversation to stare. They began to understand — deeply — how much pastry could mean to a moment.

In January 2023, they opened a 37-square-metre shop in the heart of Byron Bay. Tiny, considered, and entirely their own. Pavel baked fresh every morning. Fifteen flavours of éclairs. Celebration cakes. Craquelins. Seasonal tarts. A community that came back, and kept coming back.

Why Éclairs?

It's a question worth asking. In a food culture saturated with sourdough and smashed avo, why dedicate yourself entirely to the éclair?

For Pavel, part of the answer lives in a childhood memory — his father bringing home profiteroles from the supermarket, packaged and ordinary, but somehow still magical. "That idea of what you can do with choux pastry never left me," he says. "If you do profiteroles, you can do éclairs. And éclairs have so many possibilities — different flavours, different shapes, different looks. A lot of imagination."

The other part of the answer is the gap he saw. Classical French pastry is well understood in Europe. In Australia, it's still being discovered — and often misunderstood. The Australian éclair, he notes, has historically been something quite different from the real thing.

"It's a niche market," he says. "Part of what we do is educate people — what an éclair actually is, how it should look, what it should taste like. For people who have never been to France, they may not know. So we show them."

It's a philosophy built into the brand's DNA: flavour first, always. Every éclair, every tart, every cake begins with pairing, balance and technique — and lets the elegance follow from doing that properly. Beauty, at Eclair at the Bay, is never the starting point. It's the result.

"After six years of this business, I still love my éclairs," Pavel says. "That's the goal — if you love what you make, other people feel it too."

The Woman Behind the Brand

You can't talk about Eclair at the Bay without talking about Mary Martin.

Pavel's partner of ten years, Mary is co-founder and the creative force behind everything visible about the brand. The navy and cream palette. The elegant scalloped shopfront. The packaging. The photography. The social media presence that turned a lockdown idea into something people drove across the Northern Rivers for.

Mary is also the founder of Marius Marius, a Brisbane-based brand and creative studio, and she brings that professional rigour to every detail of Eclair at the Bay. At the new Newstead store, her fingerprints are everywhere — from the carefully considered display cabinet to the last detail on the box your éclairs come home in.

"She saw the vision I was describing and put it into a visual process," Pavel says. "Everything you see here is her."

The partnership is also, genuinely, a shared obsession. Mary handles the branding, the marketing, the creative direction — and she's good on social media in a way that matters, the kind that builds real community rather than vanity numbers. When the Mother's Day campaign launched in 2020, it was Mary who pushed it out. When people started making special trips down to Byron Bay, then following them to Brisbane, that loyalty was built on something she shaped.

Closing One Chapter, Opening Another

In November 2025, they closed the Byron Bay shop. It wasn't easy.

Byron Bay had given them everything — community, identity, a loyal customer base that had watched them grow from home deliveries to a proper patisserie. But it was a seasonal town, and its ceiling was real. Without the tourist flow, the business couldn't expand the way Pavel and Mary wanted.

"It wasn't allowing us to grow," he says simply. "We knew something new was waiting."

Brisbane had been on their radar — they already had customers here, on the Gold Coast, throughout South East Queensland. When they found 58 Commercial Road in Newstead, the decision became clear. The suburb — nestled between Tenerife and New Farm, a precinct that has quietly become one of Brisbane's most considered food and design destinations — felt right immediately.

"We heard so many good things about Tenerife, Newstead, New Farm — that whole area," Pavel says. "We got lucky with that location. It all just happened quickly."

The new space is 97 square metres — nearly three times the size of Byron. A proper commercial kitchen at the back, designed for the volume and the ambition they couldn't fully realise before. A considered shopfront with the cabinet Pavel always wanted: long, elegant, lit to make the éclairs the undeniable centrepiece of the room.

"That cabinet is the main stage," he says. "Before, in 37 square metres, we weren't able to have something like that. Now it represents 100% what we're doing here."

What's in the Cabinet

Every day: five classic éclairs — chocolate, lemon, tiramisu, salted caramel, and apple crumble. One rotating weekly special, an éclair of the week, that has included Earl Grey, passionfruit, and strawberry. Alongside them: profiteroles, Paris-Brest, craquelins, seasonal tarts, and a honey cake that nods quietly to Pavel's Russian roots.

For events and celebrations, the range expands further — birthday cakes, croquembouche towers, XL cakes, mini-dessert collections for corporate functions, dessert tables for weddings. The brand's catering and wholesale arms are growing, with an eye on hotels, office gifting, and private events.

The customer testimonials tell their own story. Brides raving that it was the best cake their guests had ever had. A self-described lemon meringue snob who has sought them out across Queensland and overseas, calling it among the best she's ever tasted. Regulars who made the drive from Brisbane to Byron Bay specifically for the pastries, and are now "stoked they're even closer to home."

What Comes Next

For now, the focus is Newstead. Building community, establishing the corporate and wedding catering operation, letting Brisbane discover what the Northern Rivers already knew.

But the longer view is already forming. Pavel speaks about a potential CBD hole-in-the-wall — something small, strategic, close to the offices and the lunchtime foot traffic that would make corporate gifting and catering genuinely scalable. And beyond that, perhaps other cities. The name Eclair at the Bay was chosen deliberately: Australia has so many bays. The possibility of growth was baked in from the beginning.

"We want to make sure this shop is working beautifully first," he says. "But long-term — yes. I think Brisbane is ready for this."

On the evidence of what Pavel and Mary have built — from a Mother's Day idea in lockdown to a Newstead patisserie that already has people lining up — Brisbane isn't just ready. It's been waiting.

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Eclair at the Bay is located at 58 Commercial Road, Newstead. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 9am–6pm. Find them at eclairatthebay.com