Your Official Pancake Day Guide

It’s Pancake Day on 21st February.

And because everyone’s SO excited about it, the supermarkets have had their shelves stacked with eggs, milk, and flour for months.

But if you fancy having someone else make your stacks for you, then we humbly suggest you go to one of the best places in town. And these are those places:
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Where the Pancakes Are | London Bridge, Fitzrovia & Battersea

This seems like a reasonable place to start. The menu here is exclusively pancakes: American ones, French ones, Dutch ones, vegan ones; you name it, they make it. Thus, since it first opened six years ago, Where The Pancakes Are has become the epicentre of the London pancake scene. And their Pancake Day offering effectively dictates where The Bar is set for everyone else. So anyone who wants to stack up will need to at least be able to match a theatrical heap of pancakes loaded up with blackberry compote, drizzled chocolate, vanilla ice cream, marble shards & sprinkles of explosive chocolate coated popping candy. It’s been created in collaboration with Matilda The Musical, and for some reason there’s a poetry competition too.

And on Pancake Day itself they’ll be opening all three of their restaurants for walk-ins only…

Details: Open from 7am-10pm on Pancake Day, walk-ins only | Arch 35a, 85a Southwark Bridge Rd, London SE1 0NQ | 7 Charlotte St, London W1T 1RG | Battersea Power Station, Unit 227, Battersea Power Station, SW8 5BN
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Sunday in Brooklyn | Notting Hill

This post is brought to you by Captain Obvious: NYC import Sunday in Brooklyn’s legendary, trademarked, triple-stacked brown butter & hazelnut maple praline pancakes are really, really good. You can get them on the dessert menu for dinner. And despite the name, it’s open on a Tuesday, in London. Praise be.

Details: Open daily | 98 Westbourne Grove, W2 5RU
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Dalloway Terrace | Bloomsbury

However you like your pancakes, that’s exactly how they make them at Dalloway Terrace. Because they’re rolling out their pancake trolley this Shrove Tuesday, and offering up a fully customisable plate of thick, American-style pancakes, French-style crepes, or Dutch-style poffertjes, made table side and topped with a wonderfully wide selection of toppings.

Details: 21st February only | The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, WC1B 3NN | £16
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Sakurado | Kensington

Sakurado specialises in one of the most important Japanese inventions out there: the mille crepe cake. Layers of paper-thin crepes are sandwiched together with cream flavoured with anything from matcha to passion fruit, to create delicate, exquisitely neat little stacks of heaven. And if you can’t get to Kensington easily, there are plenty of other great Japanese patisseries in London where you can find them…

Details: Open daily 11am-10pm | 14 Gloucester Road, London, SW7 4RB
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Fuwa Fuwa | Soho & Bloomsbury

Aaand behold another of Japan’s great inventions – the soufflé pancake. The total opposite of the mille crepe, the soufflé pancake takes up about the same dimensions – but is just one giant, fluffy-as-a-cloud pillow of dough. Fuwa Fuwa have nailed the technique, and serve theirs up with toppings like biscoff sauce and strawberries; matcha and white chocolate; and chocolate honeycomb crunch.

Details: Soho open daily 12-9pm, Bloomsbury 11am-8pm | 57A Dean St, London W1D 6AJ | Unit 8, Brunswick Centre, London WC1N 1BS
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£1 Negroni Pancakes by Gizzi Erskine | Brixton 

Gizzi Erskine will be setting up in Brixton Village on Pancake Day and slinging crepes covered in her home-brewed sweet negroni sauce. They’ll set you back just a quid a pop, and just to make it even sweeter still, she’s doing it all for charity.

Details: 21st February | Unit 25-27 Market Row, Brixton Village, SW9 8PS | £1, get tickets here
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La Petite Bretagne | Hammersmith

LPB almost certainly serve the best Breton-style crepes in the city. And you can see why – their savoury galettes are all made with buckwheat flour, and come armed with cheese, ham, egg, smoked salmon, raclette, bacon, stilton, and other ridiculously nice ingredients. They even do a Full English Breakfast galette, which you can follow up with a sweet crêpe doused in flaming Grand Marnier.

Details: Open from 8am-10pm | 5-7 Beadon Road, W6 0EA
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Granger & Co | Multiple locations

For the past quarter of a century, Bill Granger’s hotcakes have been selling… well, as anticipated, really. They’re made with ricotta, which adds an extraordinary creaminess to the pancake’s texture, and there’s a little honey butter melted on top to bring it all together. Once eaten, never forgotten.

Details: 7am-11pm on Pancake Day | Chelsea, Clerkenwell, King’s Cross, Notting Hill
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Breakfast Club | Multiple locations

The Breakfast Club usually do something slightly bananas for Pancake Day – and this year, they’ve gone fully Willy Wonka with Violet Cheesecake Beauregarde pancakes (topped with a cloud of candy floss) and Cherry Chocolate Scrumdidilyumptious pancakes, which are layered with a sour cherry compote then topped with a chocolate bomb which is melted with a pourable sauce of hot chocolate ganache. And as always, we can expect the triumphant return of their annual pancake challenge – eat a stack of 12 in as many minutes, and they’re free.

Details: Open seven days a week | Multiple Locations
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Riding House Café & Rail House Café | Fitzrovia & Victoria

You’ll be hard pressed to find a better pancake in the capital. It’s served with fresh fruit, maple syrup, triple-smoked bacon, and the real deal-sealer: vanilla clotted cream. Oh, and typically on pancake day, they come bottomless.

Details: Weekday breakfasts, 8am – 11:45am  | 43-51 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7PQ | 8 Sir Simon Milton Square, SW1E 5DJ
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Milk | Balham

Trust us, the queue outside only serves to sharpen your appetite for what are truly exceptional pancakes. Expect the likes of buckwheat pancakes with chinotto caramel and coffee parfait; or Catania pink navel with orange blossom cream, almond cake, calamansi and poppyseed brittle.

Details: 8am-3.30pm on Pancake Day, no reservations | 18-20 Bedford Hill, SW12 9RG
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The Delaunay | Aldwych

The Delaunay won’t be doing anything special this Pancake Day. Other than cooking some of the best pancakes in the city, as they do every other day of the year, of course. They come in stacks of three, and are like little fluffy blueberry-topped clouds.

Details: Weekdays 7am-11.30am, Saturdays 8am-11.30am | 55 Aldwych, WC2B 4BB
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Hoppers | Soho, Marylebone & King’s Cross

Hoppers is a trio of excellent Sri Lankan restaurants, and for one day only they’re serving a Sweet Jaggery Hopper. What is a Sweet Jaggery Hopper, you ask? Well, it’s a sweet variation on an egg hopper. And what is an egg hopper? It’s a traditional Sri Lankan rice & coconut crepe with a soft boiled egg in the middle. Only here, the egg is replaced with cream blended with unrefined cane sugar (‘jaggery’), and spices. It’s one of the more unusual numbers here, and you’re unlikely to stumble across it anywhere else in this hemisphere…

Details: Open Tuesday 5.30-10pm in all locations (plus 12-2.15pm in King’s Cross) | Soho, Marylebone, King’s Cross
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Caravan King’s Cross

These aren’t your everyday, average vanilla pancakes. Well, strictly speaking they are vanilla pancakes, but they come topped with lemon curd cream cheese, bay leaf and lemongrass poached pear, pumpkin seed, and sumac praline. Making them actually quite exotic.

Details: Served daily until 11.15am | The Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, N1C 4AA

Main image: Where The Pancakes Are/Milly Fletcher

Enjoyed your Pancake Day London tour? Then you’ll love this thing called brunch…