I was always going to have to write about Toklas Bakery eventually. In the last five months I’ve featured it in my lists of favourite bakeries, mince pies, and most recently hot cross buns — not bad for a place I first visited only this time last year.
Toklas Bakery is an offshoot of next-door Toklas, which I’ve not visited, but will have to make time for. The restaurant is one of those nebulous modern Mediterranean spots that runs just a little spendy, with starters around £15 and mains mostly £30.
That sets the tone a little for the bakery, which is hardly centred around cheap eats, but justifies itself with both quality and its no doubt expensive real estate just off the Strand.
The aesthetic is midcentury modern canteen, teak counters and wooden floors contrasted by bright yellow and green chairs that wouldn’t look out of place in a classroom. Colourful accents like these — and a host of posters and artworks — interrupt the warm wood that sets the dominant tone. As a whole it strikes a delicate balance: comfortable and inviting, with just a hint that they don’t really want you to settle in all day with your laptop.
Baked goods are superb, and start with the staples: croissants and pain au chocolat are joined by sticky cinnamon rolls, with sourdough and baguettes standing in for bread. The mince pie and hot cross bun I loved enough to recommend both play it straight, delivering exactly what you expect but doing it extraordinarily well.
But there’s room to get a little more adventurous if you like. The signature cardamom bun is a jagged, craggy explosion of a pastry, made croissant off-cuts that are balled up, dusted with cardamom sugar, and dipped in sticky-sweet vanilla syrup that clings to every crevice. Weekly specials rotate, allowing the bakers to play around with fruits, flavours, and form factors, and even something as simple as a chocolate brownie might be crafted with rye flour and buckwheat.
There are savoury options too. Every day you’ll find a couple different types of ‘strecci’, Toklas’s not-actually-Italian-for-anything name for its Roman-style pizza slices. Think square slices that are thin, crisp, and just a little bubbly, topped sparsely with tomato and olives, stracciatella and broccoli rabe, or slim-sliced potato and crème fraîche. Sandwiches are excellent too — the roast chicken on bubbly focaccia, topped with rocket, aioli, and crispy chicken skin, is a menu staple and for good reason. It’s elevated substantially by the bread, which is the only London focaccia to hold a candle to The Dusty Knuckle’s.
Come early enough at lunchtime — things do sell out now that the local office crowd has caught on to Toklas — and you’ll find one corner taken over by a single chef manning a small stove, turning out a couple of hot dishes and a salad, all just as seasonal as the rotating pastry options. I think it’s fair to say that portions are small, firmly in light lunch territory, but everything is priced below a tenner, leaving you able to succumb to the temptation of a cardamom bun for afters without feeling undue guilt.
I’ve been to Toklas Bakery a handful of times over the last year, and each time it conspires to impress me more. Nothing I’ve tried has disappointed, there are no duds to be found here. I want to work through more of chef Kyran McAdam’s risottos and little, warm bowls of stew. I want to buy the porridge loaf, and spelt, and one of those crisp, jagged baguettes. I want to taste their tahini and sesame seed cookie, one of the oozing chocolate tarts, and more than anything I just want the excuse to eat just one more of those craggy, syrup-soaked cardamom buns. I want it all, and I want it now.