Croissants, Baklava & Feathers
Four new places in London to get baked goods and something that might blow your mind…
Hello delicious-seekers,
I was so close to getting you my round up of the Speciality Fine Food Fair today but I was first listing all of the other things to tell you and that was already so long … on top of a very long list of interesting products from the fair… which I haven’t yet added all the photos into.
So I’ll keep working on it (there are so many good things!) and I’ve cut and paste all of the other things to send you this!
THREE new London bakeries and ANOTHER cookie place popped up! Plus a novel about food and a weird question for you.
Let’s go:
Puffy Cookies from Paris are in London
Available at the newly opened Parisian outpost of Junk Smash Burgers
I tried one of these when I was in Paris in March. It was good.
📌 49 Old Compton St, London W1D 6HL
🚆 Leicester Square / Tottenham Court Road
A new Notting Hill Bakery
The owner of the excellent Indian restaurants Gunpowder and Empire Empire, Harneet Baweja, has launched a bakery, Moi et Toi, in Notting Hill in collaboration with French Pastry Chef Edward Delling-Williams.
Get the duo (white and dark) chocolate and pistachio pain Suisse! Mine was still warm. 🤤
📌 16 All Saints Rd, London W11 1HH
🚆 Ladbroke Grove / Westbourne Park
It’s open 7 days a week from 8-3
A teeny tiny micro bakery in Forest Gate
On an unadopted road in east London you’ll find a colourful micro bakery run by one man, Sam. It’s called Ancient Lights and I scoffed my purchases in such a hurry I didn’t even get a photo. I’ll go back soon and update this when I do. The apple & cinnamon bun was incredible, so soft, so moist and perfectly spiced.
📌 291 Sprowston Mews, E7
🚆 Forest Gate
An Istanbul institution arrives in London
Five days ago Hafiz Mustafa 1864 opened their doors to their first UK location, opposite Harrods. There was a queue for tables - despite there being many!
To supply the store they’ve built a special factory in North London and brought chefs and ingredients from Turkey to replicate the much-loved products from their set of stores in Turkey and now also in Dubai. They are open from 9am to midnight, seven days a week and they deliver the baklava three times a day. If there’s any left after 18 hours they’re removed from the counters. I’m not sure anyone in London makes baklava this fresh or this good.
I never thought I liked baklava until I tried it fresh for the first time.
I felt the same way about croissants once, too.
They also make turkish delight, cakes and chocolates. There are upwards of 100 products, all handmade. The pistachios come from a specific area of Turkey and, wow, they’re stunning. I thought I was full but I kept eating the pistachio baklava.
📌 92 Brompton Rd, London SW3 1ER
🚆 Knightsbridge
If you can’t commit to a regular subscription and you appreciate what I share in these, you can just buy me a coffee (though you know I’ll spend the cash on a croissant and then I’ll probably come back and tell you about it here, so really everybody wins. 🎉😁🥰
Do you like novels about food?
If you like romance novels with food themes then you should know about this debut novel from one of my lovely paid subscribers (and new friend)
!
He’s a chef that’s just won a reality tv show, she’s a struggling writer working on her own cook book.
You can get The Slowest Burn on Amazon, Bookshop.org or your local bookstore. I love a good romance novel and can’t wait to read it.
FUN SIDE FACT: I’m IN a romance novel!
Here are the receipts:
Tomorrow I’m unlocking another never-knew-it-was-on-my bucket list item as I get to be a judge for a croissant competition with Isigny butter!
Probably would’ve been better not the day after I’ve just finished a 9:30-6:30 London tour of bakeries. 🥴 But also, I just led a full day of visiting bakeries and got to call it work and tomorrow I get to eat some of the country’s best croissants. What is my life? I can’t even believe it sometimes.
Before I go I have a question for you:
Could you eat feathers?
Yes, feathers.
Last week I went to a Future of Food talk as part of Regent Street’s Future of Food Week and I posted about it on my (@jennifer.earle) Instagram stories and it got quite a strong reaction. I put it on @thenextdeliciousthing feed to see if I could get more people talking.
If you don’t fancy commenting on Instagram I would love to know your thoughts here:
Or go for the poll:
Speciality Fine Food Fair round up coming, I promise.
If there’s anyone you know who would like to hear about any of these things please pass it on to them. My hope is that the more people know about the small businesses I share in particular, the more chance they have of still being here to sell to those of us that do know and love them! I hope that makes sense. I’m very tired and my brain is quite sugar-addled.
But please do share!
Chat soon folks,
Jen x
P.S. Don’t forget that Michael & Pippa James will be at Eric’s this Sunday in southeast London, EK Bakery is doing a collab with Manilife at their Broadway Market-adjacent bakery this weekend and the Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival is happening this weekend in Suffolk. And next weekend 5-6th October is the Chocolate Festival in Brighton! If you need more details on any of these: reply or comment below. I need to sleep! 🫠 😴
Also, if you can tap the heart at the bottom of this email ❤️ it apparently helps more people find these too. Thanks! 🙏
Thank you for the tip on Ancient Lights Bakery! I've been looking for an excuse to try a couple of spots in Forest Gate!
Drooling over the baklava 🤤🤤🤤
and that was some hot herbal tea. Oh my goodness.
OK about the feathers ..
well it depends on what animal the feathers came from as some birds are cleaner than others 😉
I love protein, but I prefer to get it from my meat and I don't think it's really affecting climate the way they say it is.
Just watch their big jets and yachts go through the skies/waters in the environment... it was Charles coronation there was more of "that stuff put" out into the air then there was by a whole country. yikes!!
I've done my research. I'm not buying that. however I do love protein and I think it's good for you, but you have to have good kidneys because too much protein can cause kidney failure.
ok, back to the feathers, I wouldn't have any problem eating it as a source of protein if it came from a clean bird, but I do prefer getting protein from my meat and I'm blood type O. Meat is very important to us - some is beneficial and some is like poison so we have to know which meats we can eat.
Honestly, you had me at... baklava 🤗