
You can smell it before you see it. At Ol’ Sweet Pastry on Rachel Street, the scent of caramelized sugar and soft, yeasty dough floats down the block—Montreal’s first brick-and-mortar kürtőskalács shop has finally landed. David Sebestyen, who grew up eating chimney cakes at street festivals in Transylvania, spent years tweaking his family recipe before hitting the festival circuit in 2018. Now, the real thing is baking fresh daily in the Plateau: coils of lemon-scented dough wrapped around a wooden spit, rolled in sugar, and roasted until crisp outside and cloud-soft within. Sebestyen’s take on the classic is both reverent and inventive—walnuts and coconut in winter, Nutella and ice cream cones in summer. It’s a hyper-specific pastry with a deeply personal story, born from cross-generational collaboration and years of grit. Once a pandemic side hustle, Ol’ Sweet is now a fully-fledged bakery introducing Montreal to one of Central Europe’s most underrated street desserts.
Mentioned in
Want to know what’s happening in Montreal?
We curate local content into a weekly news bulletin so you can find out what’s going on around town in one place. Sign up to stay informed.