404 Bakery

The question they kept getting asked before they reopened in London was why they were not selling egg tarts, and the answer they wrote down is that chocolate is as native to a Hongkonger as milk tea.

Why go

Mr and Mrs 404 started this in Hong Kong in 2019 with two cakes, a three-texture gâteau au chocolat and a Lisbon chocolate cake, after getting "fed up with sugary and bland tasting chocolate cakes" (venue). They closed the bakery in the winter of 2022 to move to the UK, shared a shopfront at The Co-Kitchens in Dalston from June 2023 while they hunted for a site, and now bake on King Street in a room where the kitchen sits directly behind the counter (Hot Dinners, venue). The buying is specific. The gâteau is built on Valrhona Guanaja 70, the matcha Basque uses Marukyu Koyamaen Aoarashi from Uji, and there is a hojicha version for people who prefer roasted tea. Most of the cheesecake range is gluten free by construction, which is what a Basque bake is anyway. Their cultural argument is written out on the site: Hong Kong is "the meeting point of East and West", and they grew up tasting Domori, Amedei and Valrhona long before they baked with any of them.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the original Japanese Basque cheesecake, burnt on top. The Aoarashi matcha Basque if you want to know what proper Uji tea does to a cheesecake. The gâteau au chocolat for the three textures. The Lisbon chocolate cake, cut with Port, which is the one that made their name and which they also make without alcohol.
• Avoid: Mondays, when it is shut, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when the door only opens for pre-ordered pickups. Do not bring a group, because the room takes two pairs. Do not expect a whole cake on the day.

What locals & experts say

• Catherine Hanly, Hot Dinners, 2 June 2023, announcing the arrival: "404 Bakery comes from a couple of Hong Kong bakers who took their home city by storm when they set up an online bakery driven by their obsession with chocolate cakes. However the bakery had to close when they decided, like so many others, to leave Hong Kong for London." Her framing of the claim they arrived with: "when someone arrives in this city promising to serve up the best chocolate cake we've ever had in our lives then we sit up and take note." This is an announcement and not a review. Nothing was tasted. ref
• Mr and Mrs 404, in their own words, on why chocolate cake and not the food London expected of them: "Why are you selling chocolate cakes when you can find them everywhere in London?" They answer it with Hong Kong as "the meeting point of East and West" and a childhood spent on chocolate from Cadbury and Lindt through Venchi and Godiva to Domori, Amedei and Valrhona. On the wider point, to Hot Dinners: "We believe that chocolate cakes, just like English, are a universal language." ref
• No critic has assessed the cakes. The approved London press was searched on 30 July 2026 and nobody has tasted and reported. The bakery's own site carries three Hong Kong press quotes, from U Magazine, Metro Radio and Hungry TV, and none was checked against its original outlet, so none is used as evidence here.

Good to know

• Where: 234 King Street, Hammersmith W6 0RF. One minute from Ravenscourt Park, ten from Hammersmith.
• Timing: closed Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday are pre-ordered pickups only. Thursday to Saturday noon to 7pm, Sunday 11am to 5pm.
• Whole cakes: ordered online in advance with a pickup slot booked between noon and 7pm, Tuesday to Sunday. The slot works as an appointment and the shop may be closed outside it.
• Seats: two small groups of up to two people each. Takeaway if the tables are full.
• Drink: a house hot chocolate blend and Japanese teas.
• Diet: the venue labels the gâteau au chocolat and its Basque cheesecake range gluten free on its own product pages. There is no statement anywhere about cross-contamination, so this is recorded as a gluten-free range and not as celiac-aware. There is also an alcohol-free version of the Lisbon cake.
• Hygiene: Food Standards Agency rating 5 with a clean sweep of component scores, inspected 9 December 2024 by Hammersmith and Fulham. ref
• The Dalston confusion: the London arrival that gets cited, 12 June 2023 at 584 Kingsland Road, was a shared shopfront at The Co-Kitchens while they looked for a permanent site. This King Street shop is the permanent one and its opening date is not on the record.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. Jeff's saved-places export carries an empty Note for this row, so nothing here is attributed to him. The master CSV's "artisanal cake shop" line was written by an earlier enrichment pass.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Worth the walk from Ravenscourt Park, and go knowing what it is. A Hong Kong couple started this in 2019 because they were tired of chocolate cakes that tasted of sugar, sold two of them, and became the cake people of their city. They closed it in the winter of 2022, moved to London, spent their first months sharing a Dalston shopfront while they looked for a site, and now bake behind a wooden counter on King Street in a room that seats four people. They were asked, repeatedly, why they were not selling egg tarts, and their answer is the reason to pay attention: Hong Kong is where East and West met, and chocolate is as native to a Hongkonger as milk tea. The buying is where the conviction shows. The gâteau runs on Valrhona Guanaja 70, and the matcha Basque uses Marukyu Koyamaen Aoarashi from Uji, which is a tea house rather than a powder. Most of the cheesecake range is gluten free by construction. Here is the honest limit: no London critic has tasted any of it and said so in print, so everything above is provenance and sourcing rather than a verdict on the plate. Buy a slice, sit in one of the four seats with a pot of tea, and judge for yourself.