Pies, pasties and sausage rolls are having a renaissance in Adelaide, with chefs and bakers bringing a high end touch to the schoolyard lunchtime staple. In this pastry guide, we'll take you on a tour of the best. First up: Abbots and Kinney.

It started out as that pop-up wooden wagon that would materialise on Leigh Street every Friday morning – enticing earlybirds and those less inclined to roll out of bed at first light for their signature almond croissants.

The pop-up remains, but now, owner and patissiere chef Jonny Pisanelli has also transformed Abbots & Kinney into a brick-and-mortar cafe so Adelaideans can regularly rejoice in freshly-baked goods.

Stepping in just before the midday rush hour, we had time to choose amongst the myriad of sweets and savouries displayed in the glass cabinet.

The guy standing behind the counter enthusiastically explains the many options as well as his favourites, but all the words begin to merge together in a swirl of hunger – custard cream, praeline crunch, hazelnut crumble, lemon curd, olive paste, bechamel sauce, cheese, cheese, all sorts of glorious cheese. Best to order one of everything, surely? Delightful pun names did not help with the selection process.

We settled on a pasty. We would highly recommend this pasty.

A vegetarian version consisting of roasted sweet potato, pumpkin, cannellini beans and feta cheese was set in front of us. Let it be known that both writer and photographer are meat-loving carnivores, and still the pasty was impressive.

Made up of layers upon layers of flaky buttery pastry with a good dough-to-filling ratio, it crackled and oozed in all the right places. The pasty came served with a colourful side salad topped with sunflower seeds and coriander and mint for added zing. A generous lashing of an Indian-style chutney (the chef calls it a tomato and eggplant kasundi), which we slathered on liberally certainly made the dish.

The freshness of the salad and the tanginess of the chutney shone through the spiced pasty – a mean marriage of flavours every mouth will be only too happy to accommodate.

Those devoted soley to the pie-shaped form of pastry should be aware that Abbots and Kinney do not actually make pies. The closest thing to a pie here is probably the ‘danwich’ (a danish and sandwich combo) with fillings that change on the regular.

Our satisfied stomachs sadly could not find the space to squeeze in an extra sweet something and so, with offerings like Sugar Daddy, Ugly Raspbetty and Malibubu threatening to allude us, we have no choice but to drop by on the regular too.