Toklas Cafe and Bakery

The grain for the sourdough is milled on site, which Time Out's Food and Drink Editor noticed and the bakery itself mentions nowhere (Time Out).

Why go

The flours are named down to the farm. Toklas builds its sourdough from a blend of organic flours and grains "including heritage grain from Breurn Farm and stoneground flours from N.R. Stoates & Sons" (Toklas), and the same bread goes next door to the restaurant and out to several other London kitchens. Adam Sellar set the bakery up, the man behind Angel Bakery in Abergavenny who also built Little Bread Pedlar's bread business, and Janine Edwards runs it in London (Hot Dinners).

The counter is designed to turn over through the day. Viennoiserie from 8am, Roman sandwiches from 11am, cakes from the afternoon. The sandwich is the one with an argument behind it: the flatbread follows the northern Italian idea of a bread "designed to be light, delicate and crisp when reheated", so it goes together to order rather than sitting under glass since opening.

Coffee comes from Assembly in Brixton and the blends get rotated, which is a small thing that tells you somebody is paying attention to the second product in the room.

Order this / avoid

• Order: a cardamom bun early, off the marble counter. A Roman sandwich after 11am. The bitter chocolate and honey cookie or the tahini one, which Time Out says to put in your pocket for later. A loaf of the aged sourdough on the way out.
• Avoid: arriving for dinner, since the place shuts mid-afternoon. Weekend hours are shorter than weekday ones. And if you want bread on a Saturday, the pre-order closes on Tuesday evening.

What locals & experts say

• Leonie Cooper, Food & Drink Editor at Time Out London, February 2025: "Score a seat in the back room (past that lovely marble counter) which is covered in Frieze-adjacent exhibition posters and set up with classy, mid-century canteen seating and feast on elegant breakfast viennoiserie, with flaky croissants, pain au chocolat, and cardomom buns." On lunch: "chunky focaccia sandwiches (the roast chicken with crispy skin and pungent aioli has our heart) and strecci aka Roman-style slices of pizza." And on the bread: "add on a loaf (grain is milled in-house) of aged - or porridge - sourdough bread to take home." ref
• Harden's diner survey, 2026 edition, writing about the restaurant and stopping to name this room: "a lovely bakery with everything made on the premises, great coffee and good pastries". ref
• No industry vote. places-db/london/data/chef-votes.jsonl holds 589 London picks and none of them is for Toklas, in either room. Worth saying plainly rather than dressing up two sources as a consensus.

Good to know

• Where: 9 Surrey Street WC2R 2ND, at street level, under the 180 Strand arts building. Temple station.
• Timing: the venue lists Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm and Saturday to Sunday 9am to 3pm. Time Out's February 2025 listing says Monday to Friday 8am to 3:30pm with no weekends, so check before a weekend trip.
• Booking: walk-in. For Saturday collection, the pre-order form closes Tuesday evening.
• Diet: the ricciarelli is stated as vegan and gluten free. That is one cookie in a room built on wheat, so nobody celiac should read it as a cross-contamination policy.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 5, Westminster, inspected 19 March 2024, FHRSID 1693262, five points lost on none of the three components. ref
• Sites: two doors, one company, one street. This is the bakery at number 9. The Mediterranean restaurant is at number 1 and is a separate entry, toklas, with its own FSA registration. The bakery also runs pop-ups away from Surrey Street, including a summer residency at Coal Drops Yard in 2026, and curates markets in its own room featuring other London bakeries.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for this row. The master CSV line "Bakery arm of Toklas; laminated pastries and loaves" came from an earlier enrichment pass rather than from him, so it has been rewritten rather than quoted.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth the detour if you are anywhere near the Strand in the morning, and the reason is milling. Time Out's Food and Drink Editor records that the grain for the sourdough is ground in house, and the venue names the two suppliers it grinds: heritage grain from Breurn Farm and stoneground flours from N.R. Stoates & Sons. That is capital and floor space spent on the least visible part of a loaf. The counter is built to change through the day rather than sit there, with viennoiserie from 8am, Roman sandwiches from 11am on a flatbread designed to crisp when it is reheated, and cakes from the afternoon. Coffee is Assembly out of Brixton with the blends rotated on purpose. The bread is good enough that the group's own restaurant next door serves it and several other London kitchens buy it. It stops short of the top rung because one bylined critic is the whole critical record, and because a bakery this good in a city this deep in bakeries needs more than that to be a trip in its own right.