Pophams Victoria Park
As I am still recovering from too much excitement from my various eating forays, I thought to play it safe for my next event. A branch of a bakery which served exellent coffee. Couldn’t be that much that could go wrong, right?
This is the Pophams Victoria Park branch. You can see my visit to the original here.
So trying to minimize my risk, I arrived in good time. Didn’t want to leave things to chance so as to make sure I wasn’t rushed, had a good seat (got the best in the house) and they weren’t out of stock of some of my favourite things.
Latte. Coffee was decent. Not burnt, over-extracted or with milk steamed again and again. All the various sins that I have seen in other places serving coffee before. The last issue can lead to stomach volatility in the night. Some care was being taken with the coffee preparation and it showed.
Cheese and mushroom toastie. I remember as a kid playing the game “never have I ever”. Perhaps I shall resurrect this here. Never have I ever had a mushroom toastie this good. It was firm and crunchy outside, moist and springy inside and delightfully umami with delectable mushrooms in between. Excellent.
Bacon maple swirl. If you go to Pophams (any branch), the thing to try is this as you won’t find it anywhere else. Sweet and savory and crispy, all together it makes for a delightful bite. Although it is a bit pricey for a pastry, it is as big as my head (that is quite big, so my friends tell me). So something that you can easily share.
This time at least, things went according to plan, i.e. nothing happened to me or my food. We all got along swimmingly as we didn’t get any surprises here. This place was as good as the original in taste and even has the slight edge in decor. So nothing went wrong here and I’ll happily take that.
A quiet eating 8.5/10.
A pastry and coffee was GBP 10 excluding service.
110A Lauriston Road
London, England, E9 7HA