Le Pain Quotidien arrives in Covent Garden
Le Pain Quotidien
Mon - Sat:
8.00am - 11.00pm
Sun:
9.00am - 10.00pm
48 & 49 The Market Building
Covent Garden, London
WC2E 8RF
GEO:51.512,-0.122802
Phone: 07852 531 883
When it comes to great baking, be it bread or cakes, you can always rely on a Belgian. The country’s bakers are experts in producing loaves with the heavenly synergy of flakiness and chewiness in the crust. Whatever the flavour – nutty, sour, fruity, spicy, herby, oily or oaty – the gustatory pleasure that can be found in a fine loaf is something to savour.
From fine sandwiches and tartines to delicious just-baked cakes and excellent coffee, Le Pain Quotidien makes for a healthy, inexpensive lunch, dinner or breakfast. How good is it? Put it this way, even the famously hard-to-please food critic Michael Winner pronounced its baguettes, croissants and pain au chocolates ‘delicious’, and also raved about the soups and granola parfait. From a curmudgeonly old fella like Winner, this is high praise indeed.
The artisan baker joins other recent foodie arrivals such as Yu Foria’s frozen yoghurt emporium, Ella’s Bakehouse, Tea Palace, Crème De La Crepe and Candy Cakes. These high-profile gastro openings combine with the continued success of Covent Garden’s Real Food Market, a weekly gathering of some of Britain’s best fresh produce, to be eaten on the Piazza or taken home and prepared. In short, London’s foodie community now know that WC2 is an epicurean hotspot that’s a must-do during any visit into town.
Oh, and the name? For those whose French lessons have long been forgotten, Le Pain Quotidien means ‘daily bread’. A suitably reverent reference for somewhere that is making truly heavenly loaves,
