Shop of the month
Fortitude Bakehouse, 35, Colonnade, WC1
SEVEN days a week in a mews behind Russell Square Tube station, a team of three bakers sip hot drinks when it’s still dark. They then pull on blue aprons and get to work: croissants filled with merguez sausages and chermoula, spicy Berber omelettes on rolls, chocolate and custard pain Suisse, and cinnamon sticky buns, among a panoply of other bakes, are set out before customers arrive at 7.30am. ‘My favourite time is at 6am on a lovely bright summer morning,’ says Dee Rettali, the owner of Fortitude Bakehouse, ‘where all feels right with the world and we enjoy the calm before the storm.’
This churning part of Bloomsbury—a skip from the British Museum—offers every type of customer: regulars collecting their usual coffees (made with artisanal Workshop Coffee beans), students, commuters, office workers who come for the chicken Caesar sandwiches and, increasingly, tourists making a special trip to try something they saw on Instagram (it’s probably the Fortitude take on : a fried bun, split and filled with an inch of whipped cream). The seating is arranged
