Dining Out 034: Eric’s

Breakfast in East Dulwich.

For weeks I’ve been craving a cinnamon roll. I can’t tell you why exactly, though I’m pretty suggestible so, let’s face it, it’s probably a lot to do with what my phone is showing me (I clocked recently, for example, that there have been very big queues at weekends for CinRolls at a pop up called ROLL BOYS – dandy little tattoo-style logo to boot – at Saint Espresso in Hackney Wick*). In this case, the algorithm is probably reflecting our desires back at us: the weather has gone decisively to shit, and we are all seeking comfort food. So as autumn lurches gracelessly into winter, like a pissed uncle on karaoke, it figures that the bakery hypebeasts of London have turned their affections to this properly cold weather-coded pastry (and you do have to hand it to those Swedes). I am usually a hardened patisserie ultra, but this year, like everyone else, apparently, it’s a big, doughy, sweet, rich roll I have longed for most. 

A few weeks ago when I was at home in Birmingham, I tried to scratch this itch when I went to Perch Bakery with my mom. It’s a great brunch place in the city centre, where they also bake in-house. Despite the fact that I am 30, it was a very typically “mother and child” type visit: she went for a sensible order of poached eggs on sourdough, while I chose the most ostentatious-looking thing in the pastry cabinet, which was something called a ‘laminated’ cinnamon roll. 

There’s no getting away from the fact that it was delicious – basically croissant dough spiced with cinnamon, piped at the centre with Biscoff cream, then rolled in sugar – but while the flavour hit the spot, it wasn’t exactly what I’d been looking for. I liked the laminated dough and the exterior crunch, but what I’d really sought was that pull-apart, heavy-in-your-stomach breadiness that you get with a traditional cinnamon roll. My search, alas, continued. 

Thankfully, however, I did have one inkling about a place where I’d be able to scratch this very specific itch. I am fortunate enough to live pretty much slap bang between two of south east London’s best bakeries, one of course being Toad, and the other being one of those tiny little spots that only opens a few days a week, with a limited menu. The latter is called Eric’s, and is marked out pretty unassumingly by a sunny little yellow shopfront on the corner of Upland Road in East Dulwich.

Toad is south east’s answer to Willy Wonka’s Factory – confoundingly tasty, fantasmagorical takes on quiche, croissants that look like the hats people wear to Ladies Day at Royal Ascot, Greggs iced buns on trippers – while on the other side of the coin, Eric’s deals in the hygge standards: things like pastry scrolls filled with butternut squash, apple Danishes, and, crucially, cinnamon rolls. 

I had suspected for a while that the Eric’s cinnamon roll would be a good one. This is because every time I’d happened to walk past over the last couple of weekends, at around 11AM after the gym, the cinnamon rolls would be sold out, despite a decent supply of pretty much everything else. Again, I’m easily influenced, so this type of scarcity mindset works wonders on me – and as such, last week, I decided to go the extra mile to finally secure the Eric’s cinnamon roll bag, by doing the most fucking annoying thing a person can possibly do. I got up early, and queued outside a bakery before it opened. 

When I arrived I found myself joining a longer line than expected, though if you are interested in the practicalities, Eric’s has their system down pat so you’re not waiting for very long. The demographic was a typical boujie-bit-of-south-east-London crowd – some little radge dogs, some shivering whippets, a child of maybe seven confidently ordering a coffee and walnut morning bun – if a bit older than the Toad clientele, just because East Dulwich is yummier mummier territory than Peckham Road. 

When I got to the front of the line, I picked a few pastries – the cinnamon roll I’d been coveting like the guitar in Wayne’s World, and then a chocolate chip cookie, a slice of millionaire’s shortbread, and an apple, buckwheat and salted caramel Danish to share with my friends Imogen and Elise, who were coming over for dinner that evening. Along with a filter coffee, that all came to just over £20, which is pretty standard for a bakery like this one. 

I took most of my haul packed to go, but asked to keep the cinnamon roll in a little cardboard tray. Finally, after weeks of waiting, here I was. I sat on a high stool in the corner of the Eric’s window, just after 9AM on this cold morning, and I ate the cinnamon roll I had been waiting for with my hands, looking out at the grey while I drank my steaming cup of coffee. I think it was probably the perfect way to try this specific pastry. Like I always say, dining out doesn’t always mean small plates by candlelight – it actually rarely does – but at its best, it does provide you with moments like this, where the ambience and the bite come together to create something memorable, even if it isn’t that big of a deal. 

It just so happens, however, that this cinnamon roll is a really big deal. 90 per cent of the time, cinnamon rolls are cloying but at Eric’s, the flavours are balanced. Cinnamon works as an actual spice here, balancing out the sweetness found around the pastry’s outside, which is encrusted with a thin layer of sugar. This yields to soft dough as you rip it with your teeth. On top of each roll is a neat dollop of icing – made with mascarpone, adding a more complex tartness where you’d expect to be bashed around the chops with sweetness. It felt kind of grown up – a cinnamon roll with a sleek haircut and an understated but expensive handbag, you know? (Why have I said “you know” like that’s a normal thing to say about a pastry?) 

I felt the same about the other Eric’s items that my friends and I ate later that night. The Danish had real toffee apple qualities about it, but these were saved from “too much”-ness by the nutty, savoury interplay of the buckwheat with the fruit and the caramel. The cookie was chocolate-y, of course, but dark chips as well as milk ones gave it depth, as did the dough’s definite maltiness. And where the millionaire’s shortbread was concerned, it was basically like the world’s most levelled-up Twix. The thick slice of caramel had a burnt butter taste that complicated it, and the chocolate and the crumbly biscuit layer grounded it in familiarity. The combination was pretty addictive.

I’m glad that I bought a few things to sample from Eric’s – not just the cinnamon roll, which, you won’t be surprised to learn, I scoffed like a dog eating sausages off the kitchen counter within about a minute – because it helped me to identify what I felt was a throughline. There’s a lightness of touch at Eric’s, so you feel like you’re always tasting something classic, but there’s refinement – a consideration of what it will actually be like to eat. Overt sweetness is pulled back in favour of allowing the flavours to do something surprising. A cookie is rich rather than just sugary; a cinnamon roll has a reasonably sparing filling so that you get to appreciate what’s there, rather than immediately feeling like you’ve just done the Cinnamon Challenge. It’s a tough balance to get right, but Eric’s seem to find it easy. And while they very much solved my cinnamon roll problem, they have also, in the process, created another, worse, one. I feel like if I don’t eat one of these things every day until the clocks change back again, I may not survive the winter.  

  * A likely place for them to be.

I paid for this visit.

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Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.

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