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Patisserie chef Cherish Finden is one of my favourite people on TV, eviscerating culinary incompetence with her harsh-but-fair judgements on ‘Bake Off: The Professionals’. Her enthusiastic ‘Love it, love it, love it!’ is her (less skeezy) version of the Hollywood handshake, and it’s harder to earn too. This woman knows her pastry, and her passion for it has taken her from tough beginnings working in a kitchen as a 14-year-old Singaporean school leaver, to illustrious gigs as a pastry chef at some of the world’s swankiest hotels.
Her new cafe Shiok! (pronounced ‘shook’) is named after a word meaning ‘pure pleasure’ in Finden’s native Singapore. And pure pleasure is definitely what you expect from this chef, and at these prices: an eye-watering £16 for a single, if immaculately crafted, piece of patisserie. Luckily, this place largely delivered.
Her take on French classic the Paris-Brest was transcendental: a glistering royal crown of golden pastry, haphazardly studded with caramelised hazelnuts, and pleasingly rustic next to the almost-pathologically perfect confections also on offer here. The mousseline inside had a powerful salted-caramel butteriness that I found myself daydreaming about for days afterwards. Truly, the only king I acknowledge.
The apple tin has got a lot of airtime on social media (three separate people attempted to video themselves tucking into it during our short visit) and it’s easy to see why. What kind of mad pastry genius makes an imitation tin can out of chocolate, accurate right down to the ringpull and carefully printed barcode? Finden does. But although the not-too-sweet vanilla cream and shockingly cold iced apple layer were refreshing and crisp, it was not quite knock-your-socks-off delicious. Maybe a case of ‘style over substance’, as Paul Hollywood loves to say.
Still, the chocolate teapot was another hit. It might have been inspired by Finden's grandad, and his love of drinking straight from the pot, Chinese style, but the flavours inside were pure Paris. Seriously, headily rich. ‘I think I should be alone with this,’ said my chocolate-obsessed accomplice in patisserie, as she tenderly dug through dense chocolate mousse to expose a molten caramel centre. We emerged reeling into the Liverpool Street late afternoon gloom, felled by a surfeit of pastry like some kind of little-known medieval monarch.
Shiok! is all about the patisserie. Obviously. But arguably there could be a bit more care taken with the accompanying hot drinks, which feel like an afterthought. There’s not the kind of weapons-grade coffee machine you normally hope for in a seriously luxe café. And the tea comes in bags you have to unwrap yourself, hands shaking from your hectic sugar OD, rather than in teapots with loose leaf. The setting is low-key rather than lavish, too: the vaguely corporate marble tables and leather banquettes don’t have the sense of style and fun that the pastries achieve.
Still, just as women are said to treat themselves to pricy lipsticks in recessionary times, Shiok! feels like an accessible and cheery dose of luxury as economic stormclouds gather. Go, and pretend you too are a ‘Bake Off’ judge – or a decadent historical princeling – taking seconds to destroy a pastry that’s been hours in the crafting.