Dining in Healesville can often feel like a game of Six Degrees of Phillip Sexton. The entrepreneur has owned, run and sold half-a-dozen outfits around town: wineries, restaurants and, now, a bakery.

After  splitting up his Giant Steps and Innocent Bystander restaurant and wine operations, selling the latter to Brown Brothers, Sexton took the bread-making and coffee-roasting components about 200 metres west to a long-disused shopfront. There he constructed a charcoal, wood and white interior, screwed in a wall-long bench outside to catch the winter sun, and then let the baking aromas waft.

The result is a straightforward affair built around crusty sourdough loaves, Turkish breads that look like Rorschach blobs, and rustic baguettes. The latter are the basis for Habituel's only substantial savoury offering, perhaps filled with ham, comte cheese and a little mustard. Other than that this is simply a spot for coffee and a sweet thing, which, judging by the crowds, is a winning combination.

Habituel's system needs refining: patrons line up beside the goodies on offer (buttery escargots, glossy danishes, Portuguese custard tarts, and shortcrust tartlets brimming with a rich chocolate filling and perhaps crowned with a seasonal berry), pay, get a plate, and then have to double back to collect their choices.

But these are teething issues, and once at a table with house-roasted coffee delivered, it's easy to see how one could make a habit of returning.

Open Daily 7.30am–4pm.

314 Maroondah Highway, Healesville, 03 5957 3230, habituel.com.au