Primrose Bakery, Covent Garden www.primrosebakery.org.uk 42 Tavistock Street, London WC2E 7PB
Tel: 020 7836 3638
Wrapped across a corner in London’s theatre land, the place is certainly gorgeous. Lemon yellow paint and striped awnings pull in girly types in red lipstick and fringe cuts. A Barbara Woodhouse headscarf wouldn’t go amiss here. And ain’t it all dainty? The Primrose Bakery – the original one being in Primrose Hill and frequented by celebs such as Jude Law – is very 1950s tea parlour.
We hovered over the counter admiring the zany swirls and Halloween faces before plumping for carrot cake with a delicate orange and cream cheese icing, cookies and cream, lemon cupcake and a fun marshmallow confection. We also tried minicupcakes with coconut, rose and mocha icings and a lovely banana fairycake. The sponges are mainly vanilla and chocolate but can variously be coffee or whatever the bakery downstairs chooses that day. The beauty – and most of the flavour – is most definitely in the icing as a couple of the sponges had sadly dried out a bit. But despite the sweetness of sitting pretty in pink eating cake, we both felt very sugar rushed after a while although we had halved and shared. We downed good cappuccinos to halt the swoon but the cupcake fever raged on. Now that’s all I can possibly write about cupcakes right now and I’ve decided that it’s all a lifestyle thing – if this is your lifestyle, the Primrose Bakery seems a wonderful place to hang out. But call me killjoy, I don’t see what all this fuss is about. Hyperbolic cupcakes! I stepped out of elevenses and back into my grungy life of French Fancies.