It’s Pancake Day on 13th February.
And there’s a stack of good reasons to celebrate.
Specifically, the ones being assembled by professional pancake purveyors across the city. We’re talking old-school wafer-thin crepes drizzled in lemon & sugar. We’re talking thick American blueberry pancakes with extra bacon. We’re even talking Japanese soufflé pancakes that are more cloud than food.
Here 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 babies’; you name it, they make it. Thus, since it first opened almost a decade 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 we’ll be waiting with baited breath to hear what special they’re putting out this year…
Details: 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 | Book here
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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: 98 Westbourne Grove, W2 5RU | Book here
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Sakurado | Kensington, Vauxhall, Chinatown
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: 14 Gloucester Road, London, SW7 4RB
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Fuwa Fuwa | Soho
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: 57A Dean St, London W1D 6AJ | Walk-ins only
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La Petite Bretagne | Hammersmith
LPB almost certainly serves 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 tasty ingredients. They even do a Full English Breakfast galette, which you can follow up with a sweet crêpe doused in flaming Grand Marnier.
Details: 5-7 Beadon Road, W6 0EA
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Granger & Co | Across London
For the past quarter of a century, Granger & Co’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 – and they’ll be serving them till 5pm on Pancake Day.
Details: Chelsea, Clerkenwell, King’s Cross, Notting Hill, Marylebone | Walk-ins only
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Mildreds | Across London
Yep, even vegans can get down with Fat Tuesday – because these plant-based eateries are serving up some outrageous stacks this Pancake Day. Mildreds is serving up quadruple towers of vegan pancakes drizzled in Biscoff sauce, vanilla maple syrup, speculoos caramel, cookie crumbs and banana, while sister restaurants Mallow will be topping their Black Forest Pancakes with cherries, hazelnuts and vanilla cream…
Details: Across London | Book Mildreds here and Mallow here
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The Aubrey | Knightsbridge
Remember those soufflé pancakes? Well if you head to The Aubrey on a weekend – that’s The Mandarin Oriental’s plush take on a Japanese izakaya – you can get them topped with equally fluffy whipped cream and fresh fruit. They also do stacks of matcha-infused pancakes and okonomiyaki – a kind of savoury pancake, served here with tea-smoked salmon and kewpie mayo.
Details: Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, SW1X 7LA | Book here
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Riding House Café & Rail House Café | Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury & 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: 43-51 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7PQ | Brunswick Centre, Bernard St, London WC1N 1AF |8 Sir Simon Milton Square, SW1E 5DJ | Book here
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EVE | Kensington
Rebecca Hope Photography
EVE has just launched brunch, and while the bottomless mimosas, live soul music and Middle Eastern styled mezze dishes are all perfectly delightful, you’re really here for the enormous stack of cardamom pancakes that caps off the meal, complete with cherry & chocolate sauce to pour all over it. Oh, and Nudge Members can take 50% off the food bill while they’re at it.
Details: 202-220, Cromwell Rd, London SW5 0SW | Book here
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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: 18-20 Bedford Hill, SW12 9RG | Walk-ins only
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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: 55 Aldwych, WC2B 4BB | Book here
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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: Soho, Marylebone, King’s Cross | Book here
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Caravan | Across London
These aren’t your everyday pancakes. Well, strictly speaking Caravan does serve them every day. But for pancake day, they come topped with cream cheese, ginger and poached strawberries; lemon curd cream cheese & poached pear; or in savoury form with kimchi pancakes, Korean fried chicken and a fried egg. Which actually makes them quite exotic.
Details: Across London | Book here
Enjoyed your Pancake Day London tour? Then you’ll love this thing called brunch…