Dining Out: Five London Pastries I've Known and Loved

From burek in south east to cornetti in Hackney.

There are few food groups (it is a food group) which mobilise the people of London like pastry. Pastry will have you waiting in hour-long queues; it will have you holding a photoshoot for your lunch instead of eating it. “Pastry so good you’re travelling across the city for it” *tongue out emoji*, you know? I’ve spent a long time wondering about why exactly this is, and other than the very complicated axis of lifestyle markers I have tried to dissect before, the only reason I can think of is this: pastry tastes really, really fucking good.

Other than garlic bread (duh), pastry is probably my favourite thing to eat. It’s a real Saturday of a food: I love the crunch, the butteriness, the fillings (to an extent), the slightly greasy feel on your fingers after you eat it. My favourites tend to be quite simple in flavour – I don’t really go in for lots of bells and whistles like layers of jams and icing and reductions or whatever (although as you will see below, I do lap up a custard). I think this is because I prefer the focus to be on the pastry itself, which should be crisp but also tearable and pillowy. With that loose criteria in mind, here are five pastries that I still get a bit misty over, from bakeries across London.

Sweet polenta pastry from Layla Bakery

I actually dropped half of this on the floor* but what I did have was enough to confirm that I love Layla Bakery in Notting Hill, where a croissant costs about nine quid (when you might see a celeb while you’re chowing down, you do have to pay a premium), and they do a very good line in the Standards Done Well – your pain au chocs, your Danishes, all the hits. Because this is me, however, I went for the stodgiest thing on the counter when I visited a while ago. Picture the scene: extremely crisp pastry with gorgeous, bubbly layers, filled to bursting with sugared polenta, which basically had the taste and effect of a semi-solid custard. Absolutely impossible to eat in one go, of course, but even a lil bite was a big treat.