Lily Vanilli

Lily Vanilli is one of London’s premier artisan bakers, offering quality cakes with innovative flavours and sumptuously creative designs. She opened her first bakery on Columbia Road in East London in 2011, and a star-studded client list, two books and a cake and cocktail private members club swiftly followed.

All this success sprang from humble beginnings. Lily (real name Lily Jones) initially started baking as a way to make ends meet after a change in career, selling her delectable wares at a local market. Today, however, her recipes feature in broadsheet newspapers, and her cakes can be found at events held by the likes of the V&A Museum, Lulu Guinness, Hello Kitty and Elton John. 

Part of the draw of Lily Vanilli’s creations can clearly be attributed to their beauty and visual intrigue. Towers of sponge are enveloped in perfect icing, and decorated with a wave of fruit, flowers and glitter. Slabs of chocolate are piled high and sprayed with gold (or painted with leopard prints!) to create some intimidatingly perfect cocoa castle. Equally vital in the notability of these cakes, however, is the unusual, curious and innovative mix of flavours, and the perfection of her recipes. Alongside perfectly crumbly pasty and feather-light sponge is the fusion of alcohol (see her chocolate hot toddy tarts), shards of sugar glass and crystallised flowers, all utterly faultless and incredibly well-honed. All this success is particularly impressive when one considers that Lily has had no formal culinary training.

  

As well as all this, Lily has also published two books, both of which offer real insight into how to be more creative and accurate with baking. Sweet Tooth, her most recent book, really goes into the science of baking – why you should have a clean dry bowl when making meringues, the difference using bicarbonate of soda and baking powder has on baking, and how long exactly you should leave a cake in the tin while it is cooling, for example. The book also looks deeply into the history and culture of baking, as well as offering a wide range of interesting technique and flavour combinations to experiment with at home. Lily’s first book, A Zombie Ate My Cupcake, is conversely more fun and quirky, offering B-movie themed baking, with severed finger and bullet wound cupcakes the order of the day.

Lily Vanilli offers a refreshingly creative, accurate and ballsy spin on baking in a world where chintz, simplicity and the British Bake Off reign supreme. Book her bespoke cake design service or cake canapés for occasions and events, or try out her recipes for yourself by purchasing one of her books. For the quintessential Lily Vanilli experience, however, get yourself down to her teeny bakery, with its rustic charm, small courtyard and exquisite sugary delights.

http://www.lilyvanilli.com/

Morelli’s Gelato

 Established by an Italian immigrant in 1907, Morelli’s offers some of the richest, creamiest gelato the seaside has to offer. Giuseppe Morelli started his business over 100 years ago selling home made ice creams from the back of his push bike. This bike eventually turned into a van, and finally, 1932, Morelli set up his ice cream parlour in Broadstairs, Kent, on a cliff high above the sea. 

The shop remains to this day, and features grand art deco interiors that evoke a lost hay-day in English seaside culture. Indeed, part of Morelli’s charm is its atmosphere. Presiding as it does over the well-kept Viking Bay, the interior of Morelli’s includes pink leatherette booths, a jukebox and a soda fountain, which obviously has a charismatic, retro glamour. 

The real appeal behind Morelli’s however is the sheer quality of the ice cream on offer. Morelli’s ice cream is velvety soft, silky, and very different to industrial, mass-produced ice creams. All Morelli’s ice creams are made from fresh, natural ingredients chosen for their taste and quality. These ingredients combine to make hand-made ice cream, fresh everyday and formulated to a signature family recipe by Morelli’s special ice cream chef. Supposedly the gelato is milk based, which as well as being healthier and easier to digest, carries flavours better, for a crisper, more robust taste. Certainly, this is a heritage brand that clearly knows a good ice cream from the inside out.

Morelli’s have also offered a huge range of flavours over the years, and will typically have at least 30 in the store at anyone time. As well classics such as strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, there is caramel, lemon, coconut, cherry, pistachio and mango. If you eat in, you can also choose from a delectable range of ice cream sundaes, all served in fabulous cut glass goblets. And the choice? How about Banana Spilts, Knickerbocker Glories, Amaretto Cherry Sundaes and Rum Babas to get your mouth watering.

Today, Morelli’s has been taken over by Giuseppe’s great granddaughter Bibi, who has seen Morelli’s go from strength to strength. In 2003, Morelli’s opened a franchise counter in Harrods, selling the same excellent, freshly prepared ice cream as that in Kent. Morelli’s have also recently opened new stores in luxurious foreign climbs, including Monaco and Dubai. You can even have Morelli’s gelato delivered in insulated packs to your own home, or have a Morelli’s ice cream cart at a special event.

For the true Morelli’s experience though, you simply must head down to the seaside, and enjoy your ice cream from a cone whilst soaking up some sea air and faded charm.

http://www.morellisgelato.com/

Poppies Fish and Chips

 Just off Commercial Street in the heart of Spitalfields, straddled between the area’s legendary fashion market and our world famous Brick Lane is Poppies Fish and Chips. As you might expect, situated as it is amongst fashion boutiques and hipster bars, this is not your average fish and chip shop – this is excellent quality fish and chips with a vintage, retro twist. Poppies fuses old school East End values and hipster sensibilities to create a cool restaurant that has tasty, great value food.

The first thing that strikes you about Poppies is the retro feel of the place. This restaurant has an informal, friendly setting, but the strongest vibe is the 1950s style – the formica tables, the jukebox, menus written in chalk and service girls wearing aprons and headscarves. This traditional visual style is replicated in the food. Chips are served in newspaper. The menu includes all the old favourites you would expect and a good ol’ fashioned chippy, with classic cod and haddock potions alongside skate, rock, plaice, lemon sole, as well as the dreaded jellied eels. You can even get a generous potion of sticky toffee pudding or apple pie for afters. 

Poppies offers the perfect combination of traditional and fresh, posh and popular. The food is so familiar, yet of innovatively good quality. All fish is sourced fresh and sustainably from Billingsgate Fish Market. Chips are peeled and hand-cut out back. The chicken is all free-range. Even the tartar sauce is home-made. 

One of the most noteworthy elements of Poppies however is the consistent quality they offer. The food is always good. You will never get a soggy chip or sour, tasteless fish. You will always be served quickly, and can usually get a seat in the restaurant, even though they seem to always be busy. Such high levels of quality and customer service, as well as the general appeal of Poppies Fish and Chips is all down to Pop, the owner of the restaurant. Pop and his family have been serving fish and chips in the East End since 1945, and the experience shows. This restaurant is a masterpiece in traditional food, offering probably the best fish and chips in London.

Poppies is active on Twitter, FourSquare et al., and they even have a customer of the week loyalty scheme on Facebook. You can eat in or takeaway; I personally like to stop for a cone of chips and a cup of tea, eaten outside the front of the shop. Such an experience is blissfully English. I’m pretty sure I had change from £2 last time too.

http://poppiesfishandchips.co.uk/

Nordic Bakery

Nordic Bakery offers its punters a potent snippet of Scandinavian culture, right in the heart of Soho. Founded by Finnish chef Juli Wahlsten in 2007, the aim of the Nordic Bakery is to create a café environment “just like any café you would find across Scandinavia”. The focus is on serving traditional Scandinavian food, with a simple, homemade vibe. The result is very authentic, good quality cakes, sandwiches and biscuits at completely reasonable prices. 
 

The Nordic Bakery offers comfort food Scandinavian style, with cakes and pastries being a particular speciality. On any given day, you can find Swedish Tosca cake, poppy seed and ginger cakes, as well as fabulous Finnish cinnamon buns, which are utterly divine. There are also plenty of tasty savouries, including open rye sandwiches with ham and Jarlsberg, gravadlax or smoked salmon. Food is based around seasonal fare and low-fat options where possible. There is also plenty of tea, and excellent quality, strong coffee to wash it down with. 

Food is available to eat in or take away, but unless it is a particularly beautiful day it is wonderful to sit inside this peaceful, uncluttered, and uncomplicated café. The Nordic Bakery interiors are minimalist as you might expect, with cool, muted colours, dark woods, and functional IKEA-style furniture. 

There are a variety of rye breads baked daily to take home, which are light, tasty, and nothing like the heavy stodgy stuff you get in supermarkets. You can also purchase preserves and juices from the Tillmans of Sweden range, with Scandi flavours such as lingonberry, raspberry and Arctic cloudberry. You can even buy cases of hand-bottled natural blueberry juice.  

Nordic Bakery have a main branch in Soho, and a sister site in Marylebone. A third branch is due open in May 2012. The bakery has also published a cookbook in 2011, with plenty of sweet and savoury recipes.

http://www.nordicbakery.com/

The Grand Café

The Grand Café is allegedly the oldest coffee house in England. The establishment is said to have featured in Samuel Pepys’ diary, and records show the oxford site has featured a coffee house since the 1650s. This luxurious teahouse, bar and café has become an Oxford establishment, frequented by tourist and students alike. The café is even said to have been a regular favourite of Chelsea Clinton when she was studying at Oxford, with Bill reputed making the odd appearance.

 The Grand Café specialises in cream tea and high tea, both of which are full of traditional English tea staples such as scones, finger sandwiches, lashings of loose-leaf tea, ground coffee and the odd spot of champagne. They also serve lunch, offering a range of English and Italian inspired sandwiches, salads, seafood dishes and free-range meat pies. In the evening the café makes a final transformation into an opulent cocktail bar, with good quality cocktails, liqueurs, beers and fine wines.

 The food at The Grand Café is not extravagantly upmarket, but it does offer a nice snippet of luxury, and is certainly nice when you fancy a posh little treat. The prices might be a little over the odds, but the whole point of visiting The Grand Café is that it is an occasion. The café itself is beautifully laid out, with marbled pillars, filigree and gold leaf adorning every surface. There is a grandiose art deco feel about the place, which is ultimately what make it a stylish, lavish, and coolly aloof independent treasure, and a nice stop-off on a day trip to Oxford.

http://www.thegrandcafe.co.uk/

Laduree

Whilst Laduree are not strictly a UK based company, they are independent, and have a number of outlets across London for us British to access. The company have three patisseries/tea salons in the capital, one based in the Burlington Arcade just off Piccadilly, one in Harrods, and of course their newly opened premises in Covent Garden. Laduree are starting to take pockets of the UK by storm, and it’s easy to understand why, with their intricate, luxurious and very, very French style of desserts and patisseries.

Laduree was established in 1862 in a prestigious area of Paris, and quickly attracted the custom of Parisian high-society. Initially purely a patisserie, Laduree evolved into a tea salon, which offered a sit-down, restaurant-type feel to afternoon tea and cakes. Laduree salons now feature in each of their outlets, which are luxuriously adorned with plush velvets, opulent silks, golden brocades and gilding, all in a classically Parisian palette of rich navys, pale pinks, absinth greens and deep blacks. This aesthetic theme has continued on from the literal walls of each Laduree location to the packaging of their cakes, available in gorgeous boxes and cases you’ll be desperate to find a use for long after you have scoffed all your cakes away.

Laduree take traditional French cake and pastry recipes and elaborates on them greatly, to create diverse, extravagant, exciting and experimental new culinary inventions. Typical concoctions include pain au chocolat with chocolate and pistachio cream, a chocolate mini-gateaux with morello cherry jam and gold leaf whisps, rose raspberry, violet and caramel-mango profiteroles, and Laduree Saint-Honores – towers of puff pastry with fruit, cream, chocolate, nuts and a flavoured sugar-glaze.

Laduree are best known however for their sandwich macaroons, which were actually invented by the company back in the 1800s. The simple base macaroon recipe of ground almonds, eggs and sugar with a ganache filling is livened-up by their huge diversity of flavours. As a simple taster, they currently have flavours of cherry kirsch and chocolate, mint and strawberry, lily of the valley, orange blossom, rose and orange and granny smith apple, amongst numerous others on their shelves. What was a simple treat is instantly made into a rich indulgence.

Laduree’s X-factor is found in the combination of excellent, quality baking, a huge variety of innovative flavour combinations, the literal beauty of the cakes and the sumptuous surrounding you can eat them in. A Laduree take away is the perfect treat for yourself, or a special person/special occasion. A box of macaroons starts from £11, and you can buy individual patisseries from £3.95. A trip to the tea salon is a guaranteed winner for a special date, especially for a lady you want to spoil, or really make a real impression on. 

http://www.laduree.fr/