I recently had my mum, who also contributes to the site, up to visit for a girl’s day out compromising of cake, ice cream and chocolate! I decided to take her to BB Bakery in Covent Garden for breakfast since I regularly walk past the café but had not visited, as I couldn’t remember its name. Prior to our visit, it took me a good 30 minutes of searching the web to find out what it was called!
The interior resembles an upmarket Parisian café which is great as we all know Paris have some of the best eateries around. The menu holds a good selection of sweet and savoury items for both breakfast and lunch. In addition, the bakery contains a glass fronted counter where there were many cakes to choose from. The prices were reasonable for its central London location, but a little more expensive than some other cafés in the area such as Daskalidès. A coffee is priced at £3 and cakes around £5.
After ordering coffee we both went up to the glass counter to choose our food. We spent a good 5 minutes deciding and went for what may be perceived as a slightly unusual choice for breakfast at 9am, but certainly not for us!
I decided upon a ‘Mille Feuille’, which is French, meaning ‘a thousand layers’. In the UK we often use the less extravagant name ‘custard slice’. I have previously sampled one of these at Paul and also Patisserie Valerie and although some time ago, I believe that this one was the nicest. The slice comprised of two thin layers of crispy puff pastry which has the same texture as the pastry found in cheese straws but of course tasted sweet. The pastry was very nice although it tasted a little greasy, like the other custard slices I’ve tried. This made the dessert fairly rich and heavy and certainly not ideal for breakfast. Sandwiched between the pastry layers was thick custard flavoured with vanilla pods, the seeds of which could be seen throughout.
Although great tasting, the Mille Feuille was incredibly difficult to eat and when I finally bit through the pastry, the custard oozed out dismantling any form of structure. It was very messy indeed. This is a great tasting dessert but it did leave me with the full feeling of eating heavy pastry, similar to that experienced after eating a Gregg’s Sausage and Bean melt. That’s not to say the Mille Feuille from BB Bakery isn’t the best I’ve had, it’s just that kind of cake.
My mum decided on a lovely looking seasonal fruit tart. The tart had a sweet pastry base which tasted very fresh. Upon that was a layer of smooth pistachio paste and raspberry jam, in the middle was raspberry mousse which was light and sharp tasting, edged with fresh raspberries and topped with a blueberry. After hearing how nice it tasted, I certainly wish I had gone for a something smaller and less heavy, like this tart.
We both enjoyed our “breakfast” as the cakes were fresh and the coffee good. Unfortunately, when we were there the owner and his builder were there discussing dimmer switches rather loudly and I think that this should have been done at a more appropriate time and not when the bakery was open for business with customers trying to enjoy coffee and cake. It was a little off-putting when we were trying to speak and relax in the stylish surroundings. On saying this, we will most probably visit this bakery again and would certainly recommend it.
Living life, loving cake,
H & A x
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