Dining Out: Five London Desserts I Have Known and Loved

Cheesecake, Baked Alaska, and, obviously, tiramisu.

I am such a dessert person and I don’t really trust people who write about food and say they aren’t. It’s possible that I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s just because I really mean it: I love dessert because it is the only part of the meal which is purely and properly *about* fun and pleasure. Usually you don’t actually require it to be full – everything that has gone before has taken care of that – but that’s why it’s good: it’s the colourful, novel bit of the menu that winks and coaxes and appeals to what you fancy rather than what you need. If you’re going to a restaurant and skipping that, then we’re fundamentally different people. 

Recently, even when I’ve just at home destroying my brain cells individually but systematically (otherwise known as watching Married at First Sight), I have been making time to have dessert* just to feel like the evening is rounded off properly, and it’s even more non-negotiable if I’m eating out. So because I’ve had puddings on the brain a bit, I thought I would write about five that I really like this week. 

I’ve obviously eaten a lot of amazing London desserts in my time, so for the purposes of narrowing down a selection of five, I have established a couple of loose criteria: firstly, no pastries, because while they’re my favourite, I eat them so much that my body probably thinks they’re their own food group. As such, they probably qualify for their own post (sound off in the comments if you’d like a London Pastries I’ve Known and Loved in the future). 

Secondly, I went with desserts here that I found especially memorable and novel, or that felt they especially said something about what the restaurant is trying to do more widely. I don’t like “Best X In London” chat very much, so I’m not saying these are the greatest desserts in the city or anything, they’re just a few that I really vibed with, personal taste-wise. 

Basque Cheesecake, Solis

Solis was big news there for a bit, I guess because when it opened it had a large PR budget and the type of kitschy aesthetic that Instagram goes cuckoo for, but I feel like I hear about it less now. That can be the way with somewhere that opens with a big campaign. I do sometimes think that is for the simple reason that Restaurant Opening Culture is very Emperor’s New Clothes-y, and these places are often not actually all that good – but in the case of Solis that’s categorically not true.

It’s done out to look like a film set dresser’s idea of a traditional Portuguese restaurant, and it’s slap bang in the middle of a food court in Battersea Power Station, but this place is affordable, the menu is short, the cooking is simple and really well-executed, and the Basque cheesecake should have a monument erected to it. 

Obviously this stuff is literally everywhere, largely because it’s so photogenic, but of all the Basque cheesecakes I’ve tried in London (including the Brat one that they cook in the wood oven!), this is my favourite. It’s eggy and custardy rather than totally solid-feeling – you don’t ease your spoon through it, you scoop it – and as a result the browned top contrasts even more with the rest of it. It’s served no fuss because it knows it’s great – so it just comes with a really simple but very sharp berry coulis. A real banger. There’s basically no time of day when a rare steak with crisp fries, followed by a serving of this doesn’t sound like the best thing you could possibly be eating, and it’ll only set you back about £30.