Crème De La Crème: Birley Bakery and Chocolate Shop
Birley Bakery and Chocolate shop — a boulangerie-patisserie run by Robin Birley and pastry chef Vincent Zanardi — are the places to be this Christmas. The Rake whets your appetite...
They say that when an establishment receives three Michelin stars, it shows that it’s worth travelling over land and sea to enjoy the degustatory pleasures therein. Diners were well within their rights to visit Tokyo just to see Jiro-san before his well-earned retirement, and, until the end of this year, may do the same in Copenhagen to experience Noma. If there is any criticism of this guide, and there is plenty, it is that the proponents of this way of thinking have hijacked a useful benchmark. So when one says, “It’s worth travelling to London solely to visit Birley Bakery and its recently opened neighbour, Birley Chocolate shop” — and people would be quite right to say it — others will scrutinise the opinion by looking to see whether they have three stars attached.
This kind of short-sightedness is why we are all wondering if the world is closing in on itself. Birley Bakery, opened in early 2023, is a boulangerie-patisserie run in partnership by Robin Birley, el jefe when it comes to London private members’ clubs, and Vincent Zanardi, a French chef de pastry whose lifelong dream has been to found one of these establishments in London, teeming, as it is, with hustle and bustle. “We want chefs passing by with pastry racks, and we want noise, which is what we have in the bakery,” Zanardi says. “I wanted the food to be similar to what I grew up with 30 years ago, where you could find your chocolate, your bread, your croissant, pick up a Sunday cake, or a box of chocolates for a present.”
He says that opening a bakery in France is like opening a pub in the UK: a town is not complete without one. So why didn’t he open it in Paris? “Initially I was shy about Paris, but I have discovered something: I don’t think the French know how to make coffee properly. I think people believe they know, but I don’t think they get it right. We believed there was a market for it in London, the opportunity more than anything else, and I wanted to get London right, as this is the home of Robin and his clubs.”
The bakery is now an established part of Chelsea life, slotted in near the other authentic venues in the Chelsea Green area, such as the Chelsea Fishmonger, Andreas greengrocer, and Jago butcher. The Saturday morning queue is as predictable as the Thursday night rush to 5 Hertford Street.
I’ve no issue with changing recipes. I’ve been changing the croissant recipe every week for the last three months.
The extra space the bakery needed materialised this year, with the opening of Birley Chocolate two doors down: same Lizzie Porter handpainted walls and Maurice Chevalier on the speaker, but the pastries are swapped out for exquisite slabs or sticks of chocolate, made with considered flair that is always elegant in its presentation and flavour profile. There is an implied discretion in the Birley brand, so for the bakery and the chocolate shop, it is essential the produce speaks for itself at all levels.
The secret to it is having no fear to try new recipes, to experiment. “We work a lot on recipes before launching a product,” Zanardi says. “I am going to be really picky of what I want before it goes out. I have no issue with changing recipes, either. I have been changing the croissant recipe for the last three months every week. I was not happy with it and knew I needed to work on it. It’s complicated, as we sell 6,000 of these a week, so while I feel I have to make this change, I also don’t want to annoy 6,000 people. It needs to be an improvement. It’s about the texture, making it crunchier with more butter, but then the added butter brings out the salt and not the sweetness, which you need to resolve, but then when you make it sweeter it changes the texture. I have to listen to people as to what they want, we are more artisan than artist.”
There is a rumour Robin tried more than 50 versions of the chocolate ice cream at 5 Hertford Street before settling on the one he liked, and Vincent shares in this fastidiousness, finally landing on butters that come from Brittany and Normandy. The same goes for his approach to chocolate in the shop. He hired Corrado Fogliazza as the chocolatier, and the process of experimenting with the recipes for the chocolate remains the same there, with small tweaks until it is just right.
Vincent’s philosophy is about doing the simple things incredibly well. Without endless ingredients to provide story and flavour, this is actually more difficult than one might imagine, as a subject that everyone thinks they understand needs to be elevated without negative disruption.
A great example of how Birley Bakery rejoices in their team comes with their entry into an event that must now be everyone’s favourite annual competition: the Panettone World Cup. In-house Italian baker Francesco Coratella represented Great Britain against 13 other nations, including Peru, Australia and Canada, with his wonderful recipe that will be in high demand in the approach to Christmas. The competition is designed to promote this Italian cultural icon, but taken in miniature it reflects the hard work and dedication that the Birley Bakery team holds itself to.
It is almost a public service at this time of year to remind people that these places exist. For many of you it will already be part of a routine, but for those to whom it is not, imagine it as a good habit to fall into. The bakery and chocolate shop take the sterility out of life; they are places where people can come together and be the hustle and bustle. Maybe ring ahead to book the panettone, though.
