Sunday 13 February 2011

A review of Fleet River Bakery

71 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn, London, WC2A 3JF.

Nestled in a quiet backstreet away from the hustle and bustle of Holborn Circus, Fleet River Bakery is the kind of place which makes you not care an inch when your boss stands you up for a ‘breakfast meeting.’ In fact, it makes you wish you got up early more often so that you could feast on their sumptuous granola, Greek yoghurt and berry compote every day of the week. You may have heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and when it involves one of the homemade treats on offer at Fleet River it really is a pleasure not a chore. 

With homemade cakes, quiches and salads galore, alongside a wholesome selection of hot snacks this is the perfect antidote to the horrors of the generic, clingfilm-wrapped offerings at the office canteen. Split over two levels, there’s plenty of cosy corners in which to tuck yourself away with a good book and avoid the prying eyes of colleagues during your lunch break - basement seating offering a welcome retreat from the clatter of the service counter where suit-clad professionals bark orders at the wide-eyed staff.

The food is varied and healthy, with a wide selection of cakey treats for the less diet-inclined. Tea is served in tea pots. Lattes in latte glasses. The staff don’t blink an eyelid when you ask for just bread and butter because you’re waiting for an interview and anything more extravagant could result in nigh on disaster. The tables are wide and wooden. Laptops and broadsheets flung across tables in the morning as city types claim their territory like lions on heat. Prints on the walls are engaging enough to gaze at absentmindedly when alone.

Fleet River Bakery offers a city-centre safe house for the frazzled business person, lost tourist, or lucky passerby. It’s the kind of place that, now I don’t work nearby, I’d go out of my way to come back to. And, rather worryingly, find myself day dreaming about frequently. 

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