A couple of years ago, you couldn’t move in London restaurants for Basque cheesecake. The stuff was everywhere: it was the dessert du jour. The best one I had around that time was at Brat in Shoreditch – a moody, sexy, one Michelin star restaurant where most of the cooking, not just the dessert, has Basque influences – and it was so particularly delicious because it had been cooked in the restaurant’s wood oven, so there was true smokiness to the bake and the flavour.
Fast forward about 20 months, and the Basque cheesecake craze has moved on – many of the restaurants that spotlit the dish have changed their focus to the new flavours of the moment, like matcha and white chocolate. Brat, however, still make their excellent cheesecakes, which possess, to use the scientific terms, both heft and wibble in abundance. The kitchen serves this dessert simply, in the way they always have done: a wedge of cake with thick cream and a couple of pieces of seasonal fruit on the plate for sharpness. The lesson here is that while restaurants can’t avoid getting caught up in the London trend cycle sometimes, there’s a lot to be said for riding it out and doing one thing brilliantly.
E1
Madeleines at The French House
The restaurant above The French House pub is one of London’s finest, full stop. It’s warm, it’s inviting, the good-time hospitality feels really specific to Soho, and it strikes the wonderful balance between being kind of high end, but also enough of a laugh that nobody minds if you use the cheesy mash (or aligot, sorry) as a dip for the French fries.
Their madeleines – little sponge cakes, cooked in shell-shaped moulds, and served fresh and warm – could well be the best dish they serve. They arrive to the table fanned out on a plate, browned around the edges, served with crème au citron for dipping. The taste is as perfect as the bits of sponge you used to sneak out of the cake tin cooling on the counter as a kid, and while the feathery texture is pure French finesse, the jagged edges, giving you more of that crisp, caramelised “corner piece” taste, are all Soho. This is the kind of dessert you still want to eat when you’re really, really full – that is, the best kind.