Restaurants

By Simone Baird

The cakes produced by this tea room and cake shop set on the rapidly gentrifying Mill Lane are currently being promoted enthusiastically by Selfridges' food hall, where they've just been launched. Stepping inside the West Hampstead tea room is like entering the bedroom of an eight-year-old girl who really wants to be a fairy princess. Pink and pastels? But of course. From the walls and throw on the sofa to the pretty, mismatched crockery and cutlery handles, everything gets a dash of the soft-hued stuff.

The long room has a large communal table at the rear, a comfy-looking sofa in the middle and several tables along the wall with glass tops, just perfect for displaying retro recipes for lavender biscuits and Génoise cake, plus pieces of pretty lace and notes from happy customers. In addition to the racks of cupcakes in the windows, savoury offers on our visit included a small selection of sandwiches, pasta salad and a delicious homemade pea soup that came with crusty baguette.

It's the sweet things that matter, however, and while the regular fairy cakes suffered somewhat thanks to the sickly-sweet frosting overwhelming the otherwise decent cake, a colleague with Coeliac disease pronounced the gluten-free and vegan cupcakes the best she had ever enjoyed. Strangely, the default cuppa in the tea room comes as a teabag in a pot, so be sure to specify leaf tea.

Time Out Issue 1942: November 7-13 2007