jane brocket

capital cake: princi

Princi

 

This place comes as quite a surprise in central Soho, the spiritual home of the tiny, steamy, cramped, and much-loved family-run café. By contrast, Princi is large, expansively minimalist, sleek and shiny, with clean lines of slate counters, stone floors, cool metal tables, and marble surfaces. On one side of the large, double glass-fronted interior is smart, spacious bakery, and on the other is a cafe serving food all day which is reminiscent of a upmarket canteen in a spa (there’s even a trough of running water along the full length of one wall) or a cavernous cafe in a grand railway station on the Rome to Milan line.

It’s modern, noisy, relaxed, informal but stylish, continental in feel, and appropriately multi-lingual. There’s the choice of standing for a fast espresso, or taking your time with latte, cake and newspaper (provided) at one of the large communal tables, or perching on a stool for a tea and tiny lavender madeleine or two, all served from proper china. It’s big enough for meetings and gatherings, and such is the buzzy atmosphere that if you are on your own, you certainly won’t feel alone. 

Cakes and sweet treats are cut from huge baking trays, fresh ones being brought out all the time. They are fresh, good and down-to-earth rather than anything fancy or sophisticated, with a solidity and squareness that matches the interior decor. They are not cheap at around £4.20, but portions are generous, flavours varied (lemon, lime, chocolate, pear, toffee or combinations thereof), and all are freshly baked each day on the premises. The lemon cake is crumbly, rustic and hearty, the chocolate cake with a generous slathering of ganache topping is rich, moist and moreish, and a quiveringly creamy strawberry millefeuille is suitably difficult to bite or cut into without squirting cream everywhere. The only quibble is with the complicated and confused queuing and paying system (queue once for food, pay, queue again for drinks), but if you aren’t in a rush even this could be construed as charmingly Italian.

What a treat and delight to find somewhere where you have your cake and eat it in London from 7am till midnight, should you wish, although Princi also sells all sorts of baked goods such as seriously good bread and pizza to eat in or take out.

Piece of cake:  £3.60 - £4.60

Tea: £1.80

 Coffee:  £2.30

135 Wardour Street

London W1F 0UT

Tel: 020 7488 8888

Website: www.princi.co.uk

Open: Mon-Sat 7.00 – 00.00, Sun 9.00 – 22.00

 

capital cake: st john hotel

St John Hotel

It might be stretching it to include a place purely on the basis of its single cake offering, but this is no ordinary cake.

St John Hotel owner Fergus Henderson has long championed elevenses, the highly civilised mid-morning break that offers a chance for a drink and something fortifying to see one through to lunch. He practices what he preaches, and was to be seen in the simply furnished bar (so simple it could be accused of being antiseptic) soon after 11.00 partaking of a little ‘something to keep you steady’, as he puts it on the very succinct menu. The ‘little something’ in this case is the most delicious seed cake (£3), fresh from the oven in the hotel kitchen, thickly sliced and served with a glass of Madeira - a taste of a more leisured, less hurried way of life.

The idea of a cake is as important as the cake itself, and seed cake comes laden with nostalgia and allusions to a different time and culture. It has been scorned for its dryness and plainness, but in a gifted baker’s hands these shortcomings are turned into virtues. Unlike the economical seed cake of yesteryear, which was too often made with cheap ingredients and overkill with the caraway seeds, the St John seed cake is a gently flavoured, eggy-buttery dense sponge that belies its plain appearance. Madeira at eleven in the morning may be the height of indulgence, but it is undoubtedly the ideal partner for seed cake, and a lovely way to reclaim a moment in the day that is all too often lost.

Fergus Henderson and his master baker, Justin Piers Gellatly, are to be applauded for reviving a special cake moment.

[Elevenses are also served in the St John restaurants in Smithfield and Spitalfields  (see website) where the unbelievably brilliant St John Eccles cakes are also available. These are solid Eccles cakes, the like of which you won’t find anywhere else, and the textbook buttery flaky pastry is densely packed with black, sweet currants. They are a meal in themselves, and would certainly keep you going till lunch which at St John could include made-to-order with tiny madeleines served, like oysters, by the half-dozen and dozen, or even until the St John Hotel mid-afternoon ‘little bun moment’ when ‘warm little buttock-like buns’ come out of the oven.]

1 Leicester Street

London

WC2H 7BL

Tel: 0203 301  8020

Website: www.stjohnhotellondon.com

Elevenses served from 11.00

Little Bun Moment 3-5pm

 

capital cake: newens/the original maids of honour

10. The Original Maids of Honour

Although we live in an age of cool cafés with sleek surfaces, minimal decor, and delicious but downplayed cake, there is still a place for the unchanged, unapologetically and charmingly chintzy tea room done with panache and very good cakes.

 

The Original Maids of Honour Cafe opposite Kew Gardens is one such place. Named after the historical local speciality - a small custardy, flaky pastry tart (£2.80, worth tasting even though they disappear in two or, at most, three bites) which dates back to King Henry VIII’s time - it is a marvellous cafe-cum-bakery which flaunts its olde worlde style with dark wooden furniture, swirling carpets, rose-patterned curtains, copper kettles, and plenty of knick-knacks.

Customers come here for the showy cakes and treats they might have read about in books starring Billy Bunter and William Brown, or perhaps dreamed of eating while on a strict diet. There are cream buns, cream slices, cream horns, éclairs, fruit tarts, meringues, and plenty of cakes by the slice (coffee and walnut, orange, lemon, chocolate, fruit), all of which are made on the premises and have a good, old-fashioned taste and solidity. The waitresses' black and white uniforms, and the indestructible, sturdy metal Kardomah/Lyon’s Corner House-style tea and coffee pots tell you that this place isn’t planning on change.

The customers are a mixed bunch of locals and tourists, young and old, and it’s all rather genteel and pleasant. It is deservedly popular at weekends when the very good value, ‘full English’ breakfasts are served. The only gripe is with the very steep mark-ups; the price difference on cakes and food sold in the bakery section and served in the cafe may make some visitors think twice before eating in. This is a shame, as there is nowhere else in Kew/Richmond with such character, history, and huge cream buns, but of course you can always take a big box of cakes home with you.

Cake: £2.80 - £3.95 (eat in)

Cup of tea: £2.00 (pot £3.20)

Coffee: £2.00 (pot £3.20)

Afternoon tea: from £6.95 per person for a Cream Tea

288 Kew Road

Surrey

TW9 3DU

Tel: 0208 940 2752

Website: www.theoriginalmaidsofhonour.co.uk

Open: Mon to Fri 9 – 6, Sat and Sun 8.30 – 6

And a slice of culture: the cafe is opposite Kew Gardens. It is not far from Tikki, and is pretty close to London Welsh rugby ground in one direction and Kew Bridge Steam Museum in the other. Richmond, with its park, riverside, cinemas, theatre, and Virginia Woolf connections, is a short bus ride away.

 

capital cake: the v&a café

9. The V&A Cafe 

The V&A shot itself in the foot some years ago when it ran its ‘ace caff with quite a nice museum attached’ poster campaign, especially when it turned out that the caff wasn’t very ace at all. All that space, all those uniquely fabulous rooms, all those visitors, yet the catering was bafflingly awful.

But things have changed, and nowadays it’s possible to break up a visit to the ace collections and to rest weary museum-legs in mind-bogglingly beautiful rooms with a decent cup of tea and a slice of fresh, well-made, interesting cake.

The catering has been taken over by Benugo, a company which hasn’t yet reached large empire proportions. It has created what is now almost an entire ‘eating wing’ and the service area has been transformed into a bright, airy, smart and modern-looking place with tasteful and tasty displays of temptingly good-looking cakes, scones, meringues, cookies and muffins (as well as plenty of healthy and savoury options).

Armed with your tray, you then take your pick and choose your room, because the real icing on the cakes at the V&A are the spectacular surroundings. Leave behind the modernised white area and plunge instead into the time-warp of the three beautifully maintained Victorian rooms. Choose from the rather dour, serious, but absolutely authentic Morris Room, the more cheery, blue-and-white tiled Poynter Room, or go for the all-out over-the-top Gamble Room in the middle which is like a glitteringly-lit Constantinople railway station waiting room whose every available surface is covered with decoration (see here).

The very English slices of loaf cake (Lemon Drizzle, Bramley Apple, Orange and Almond, all £2.20) might seem pale and bland by comparison to the decor, but they hit the cake spot. So too do the classic cakes (Coffee and Walnut, Victoria Sponge, Chocolate Fudge, all £3.50) and the various scones (£1.80) with nicely presented and chilled pats of butter and tiny bowls of clotted cream (extra cost). There are concessions to modern fashions with millionaire’s shortbread (£2.20) and Portuguese custard tarts (£1.80), but the V&A has always been a supremely eclectic place, so it’s good to see a similar approach to catering.

At last, there are plentyof good reasons for sitting down in the famous refreshments rooms, rather than just passing through them.

Cake: £2.20 - £3.50

Cromwell Road

London SW7 2RL

Tel: 020 7942 2000

Website: www.vam.ac.uk

Open:  Sat to Thurs 10.00 – 17.15, Fridays 10.00 – 21.30 (closed 24, 25, 26 Dec)

And a bigger slice of culture: the V&A is across the road from the Natural History Museum and round the corner from the Science Museum. It's not far from the Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial, the Serpentine and Serpentine Gallery, Imperial College, and Kensington Palace.

 

capital cake: rose bakery at dover street market

7. Rose Bakery at Dover Street Market (DSM)

DSM is as high-end a high-end department store could possibly get. Created by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, it has five floors of artfully hung, shockingly expensive clothes and accessories in ultra- cool, minimal, stripped back ‘spaces’ (as they say) plus terrifyingly stylish assistants. Yet hidden away on the top floor, is the homely-sounding Rose Bakery where very homely cakes, brownies, slices and crumbles are served to smartly dressed/shell-shocked shoppers and companions. Incongruous though it may sound, by dint of its France-meets-England-by-way-of-Japan food and style, it is in fact the perfect fit.

This is an offshoot of the legendary Rose Bakery in Paris, owned by the English Rose and her French husband, and offers the same range of baked goods (and savoury tarts and salads) that has given the bakery its formidable foodie reputation.  It’s small (seats approx 24, plus a table or two on a tiny balcony) and simply done in stainless steel and pale wood, filled with light from the large corner window, and the staff are polite, friendly and very unintimidating. Plus the cakes are delicious.

At any one time there will be a choice of six or so: on this visit there were brownies, lemon polenta, fruit loaf, apricot slice, apple crumble, scones, and the trademark dinky, round, individual carrot cakes. The latter are textbook stuff with just enough but not too much cinnamon, a moist, spongy texture and a generous layer of cream cheese topping, while the apricot slice was dense, chewy and full of sweetened oats. Just as you would expect, tea is taken seriously, as is the reading material provided (cutting-edge design magazines).

Rose Bakery is a little oasis of calories and cake in a thin person’s department store, and is worth a detour if you are in the Mayfair/Piccadilly area. Unsurprisingly, though, it’s not cheap.

Cake: £4.50

Tea: £2.50

Coffee:  £2.50

Dover Street Market

17-18 Dover Street

London

W1S 4LT

Tel: 0207 518 0680

Website: www.doverstreetmarket.com

Open: Mon to Weds 11 – 6.30, Thurs to Sat 11 – 7, Sun 12 – 5

And a slice of culture: Rose Bakery at DSM is close to the Royal Academy, Hatchard's bookshop, Fortnum & Mason, Green Park, The Ritz, St James's Church, Piccadilly (Wren, excellent programme of concerts) and the Burlington Arcade (no whistling).

 

 

capital cake: albion caff

5. Albion Caff

With utensils in recycled Lyle’s Golden Syrup tins, daily newspapers, Brown Betty tea pots, formica-topped tables, red leather banquettes, and simple wood panelling, Albion is an upmarket and stylish reincarnation of the endangered, much-loved, humble British caff. The only things missing are grease, smoke, and steam.

Albion is in the historically fascinating Boundary Estate in the heart of Shoreditch, an area which is now attracting all sorts of creative types and businesses, many of which, like Albion, are housed in converted buildings. It’s ideally placed for Sunday morning visits to nearby Columbia Road flower market, but also a haven of civilised café life all day, every day.

The kitchens are open to view, and the baked goods come out thick and fast, with large numbers of cakes, pastries, biscuits and breads cooling on racks before being despatched to seated customers, and to the large table laden with good things in the small shop area.

Although there is a French flavour to the breakfast baking, including the biggest, most richly filled almond croissant ever tasted (£2.90, could feed two), the rest of the line-up features impressively made, old-fashioned favourites fairly priced. Portions are generous: gingerbread men are truly mannish and not boyish, and a reworked filled Bourbon biscuit is the equivalent of a fistful of the tiny packet variety. Although there is the inevitable cupcake, the cakes are definitely what you would hope your mother would make: a rich, layered chocolate cake, a startlingly pink and yellow Battenburg with real marzipan and a pleasingly home-made appearance, and a creamy-jammy Victoria Sponge Cake that wouldn’t look out of place at a village fete.

Albion has much to recommend it: smiley staff, plenty of seating including tables outside on the pavement, fish and chips, a hotel above should you want to indulge in a cake blow-out, a restaurant below should you wish to stay all day, and a wonderfully rich neighbourhood to explore. It has all the hallmarks of a carefully designed Conran enterprise which is why it does cake n' caff so well.

Cake: £1.50 - £3.50

Tea: £2.50

Coffee: £2.50

2-4 Boundary Street

London E2 7DD

Tel: 0207 729 1051

Website: www.albioncaff.co.uk

Open: 8 am – 11.30pm seven days a week

And a slice of culture: Albion Caff is near Columbia Road flower market (Sundays only), the Boundary Estate, Brick Lane and the Old Truman Brewery, and is in walking distance of Spitalfields.

 

capital cake: national cafe

4. National Cafe at the National Gallery

Once a dismal, cavernous cafe where everyone looked as glum as some of the sitters in the paintings upstairs, this was recently transformed by caterers Peyton & Byrne into a light-filled cafe with something of the Old Dutch style (black wood panelling, white walls above, plain windows) crossed with a seventeenth century London-coffee house. With one major difference: it looks as though an army of Women’s Institute bakers has visited overnight and left all their prize-winning cakes, biscuits, and treats on display.

It’s the type of display to make you gasp with delight, sigh with pleasure, hum and hah about what to choose, and talk animatedly about the joys of old-fashioned baking. It’s also one of the most tempting you’ll see anywhere in London, so hats off to P&B for reviving the ritual of a cup of tea and a bun after a cultural fix.

Cakes and treats are beautifully presented on a separate, glass-shelved, self-service counter with customers circling carefully in order to make wise choices - not easy, as all the great and good examples of British baking are lined up here [added: 'unashamedly British' it says on the website]. There are slabs of cake (fruit, banana, Dundee), slices of cake (lemon and poppyseed, chocolate, coffee and walnut), mini loaf cakes, cupcakes, rock cakes, scones, biscuits, buns (including huge, sticky Chelsea buns) and re-imagined classics such as home-made jammie dodgers, ‘Jaffa cakes’ and rich, circular, melt-in-the-mouth millionaire’s shortbread. They taste as good as they look ie a work of art in themselves.

Prices are reasonable, and appealing to families. Access is possible via a side door so cake-eating is not restricted to gallery hours. There is a self-service area (be warned though, hot drinks come in unpleasant paper cups), and a waitress service area if you want your tea in china, or a full, traditional  afternoon tea (the Lord Nelson option at £19.50 comes with a very civilised glass of port or sherry), or if you want to sample the full range of comforting, just-like-mother-used-to-make savoury dishes.

Various cakes: £2.30 - £3.40

Tea: £1.50

Coffee: £1.80

Afternoon tea served 3 – 5.30pm, £6 - £21.50

National Cafe at the National Gallery

Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 4DN

NB use the entrance on St Martin’s Lane outside gallery opening times

Tel: 020 7747 5942

Website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Open: Mon to Fri 8 – 11, Sat 10 – 11, Sun 10 - 6

And an additional slice of culture: the National Gallery Cafe is next door to the National Portrait Gallery, and close to Soho, many theatres and cinemas, Whitehall, and St James's Park. And Trafalgar Sq if you must.

capital cake: gail's (notting hill)

For the third and final review of the week, I've moved across town from Soho to Notting Hill.

3. Gail’s (Notting Hill branch)

Gail’s styles itself as a ‘local’ and ‘artisan’ bakery, and the world would undoubtedly be a better place if we all had a Gail’s on our doorstep. This branch on Portobello Road, in the heart of Notting Hill, is a gift for locals and visitors alike, and there’s a good mix on busy Saturday mornings when the market is in full swing outside.  The café is a good size and exemplifies the current trend in café-bakery style of what could be termed 'rustic-moderne’, with solid wooden tables and exposed brick walls, plenty of seating, a pleasant atmosphere, and smiling and helpful staff.

But the real draw is the integrity and quality of the baking. One large counter is devoted to a huge selection of cakes, small cakes, cheesecakes, tarts and tartlets, fondants and brownies. It’s a baking tour de force with all sorts of international influences and it creates anxious moments of indecision and mind-changing for non-locals overwhelmed by the choice.

So if you aren’t a local, the best way to have your cake here is to not hold back. When we visited, a maple finger cake (soft, moist, deliciously sweet and pecan-nutty, £2.70), a passion fruit meringue tart (crisp pastry shell, sweetly rich curd, and perfectly judged lightly toasted meringue peak, £3.95), a chocolate toffee mini tart (chocolate pastry, gooey filling with a tiny, crunch chocolate Florentine on top, £3.50) and a sticky, spicy, fresh and bready hot cross bun (£1.50) seemed as good a way as any to tackle Gail’s best. Future visits are based on the need to try the adorable mini kugelhofs, sludgy pecan brownies, a pale and interesting ricotta tart, a tiny dolls’ house raspberry and corn cake, and a slice of the spectacularly engineered, layered carrot cake.

Any bakery such as this is to be cherished, but there is major one problem with the ‘local’ ethos and that’s that there are no customer toilet facilities on the premises (do they really think that everyone has a loo round the corner to nip home to?). There is a free public toilet just outside Gail’s, but on market days the queue can be distressingly long.

NOTE: Mark-ups on the prices for eating in are high, so you might want to go for the take-home option or one of the 'moveable feast' lunch boxes.

Various cakes: £2.25 - £4.50

Tea: £1.75 (take out), £2.35 (in cafe)

Coffee:  £2.10 (take out), £2.50 (in cafe)

138 Portobello Road

London W11 2DZ

Tel: 020 7460 0766

Website: www.gailsbread.co.uk

Branches: nine in total (not all the bakeries have a café), check website for details and opening times

Open: Mon to Sat: 7 am - 7.30 pm, Sun & Bank Hols: 8 am - 7.30 pm

Also offers: catering service for picnics, parties, and ‘relaxed feasts’

And a slice of culture: Portobello Market, Portobello Road antiques shops, Electric Cinema (most comfy seats ever), legendary Books for Cooks, Piers Gough's 'Turquoise Island' which houses public toilets/Wild at Heart flowers, colourful Notting Hill terraced houses, various classic NH film locations.

 

capital cake: fernandez & wells

You know me. I like to have my cake and eat it, most often in London. It's a city crammed with cafes, tea rooms, bakeries, hotels, food halls and stalls selling amazing cakes and baked treats. We have a brilliant baking tradition here and, as I have discovered recently, London has more than its fair share of passionate, independent bakers.

Never tiring of London or of cake, I decided a while ago that a guide to the capital's best cakes would be worth researching and writing, and the publishing side was sorted out. So I went looking in earnest for London's best cakes (I was always keen, but this was with even more determination) and found some fantastic places. The only trouble is that the planned guide has now stalled for various reasons, and I find myself with a stack of cake reviews and an album of cakey photos which will all go to waste if I don't use them somewhere. So this blog is now that somewhere, and I'll be posting the reviews here.

I had fun with the title. It could have been Have Your Cake and Eat It in London, or just Have Your Cake: London. But today I've decided on a new title: Capital Cake. Because that's what it is.

(All the photos are taken with an iPhone, for a specific reason.)

1. Fernandez & Wells

Although Fernandez & Wells has a wonderful deli/sandwich shop round the corner on Lexington Street, this is the F&W place for cake. In fact, it’s one of the places for cake in London. Behind an unassuming black wood and glass facade is a light and airy, plain and simple, long and narrow cafe with a long counter filled with generous arrangements of utterly delicious-looking cakes and baked goods on simple slate trays. There is good coffee and newspapers, and scrubbed wooden counters and tables to sit at with your chosen cake .

And herein lies the problem, as this the kind of place that outs you in a major dilemma. Do you come back many times to work your way through the cakes, go all out for a one-off grande bouffe, or turn up with a crowd of friends and family so that you can order one of everything and share?

Whatever your chosen solution to dealing with such temptation, you can’t go wrong. There are loaf cakes, sliced cakes, little cakes, biscuits and the best pasteis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts) this side of Lisbon. Cakes are classic (coffee and walnut, carrot, lemon polenta) or novel and intriguing (Amalfi orange, pear, buttermilk and lavender, chocolate and brandy), and there are big, fluffy croissants, pale buttery shortbread, generous portions of flapjack, and thick bars of millionaire’s shortbread that don’t cost a fortune. Prices are fair, the staff are friendly, and the location is close to all the attractions of Soho. And it sells Barry’s Irish tea in proper tea pots. A true gem.

 

Slice of cake: £3.20 - £3.50

Tea: £2.00

Coffee: £2.50

73 Beak Street

London W1F 9SR

Tel: 020 7287 8124

Website: www.fernandezandwells.com

Open: Mon – Fri 7.30 – 6, Sat 9 – 6, Sun 9 - 5

And a slice of culture: F&W is in walking distance of the Royal Academy, Shaftesbury Ave theatres, Curzon Cinema, Liberty of London, Berwick Street fabric shops, the Marshall Street Baths, and the delights of Soho.