Cafes / Reviews
Bakesmiths – cafe review
There’s a handwritten board next to the ground floor bakery at Bakesmiths on Whiteladies Road to indicate what is baking right now.
On a recent Thursday lunchtime it was sausage rolls, almond swirls and cinnamon swirl cakes.
A bell goes when it’s time to take the freshly baked creations to the counter, balanced on top of reclaimed drawers, which display the rest of the goods, something fresh and hot appearing every half an hour or so.
is needed now More than ever
If it’s a food order from a customer sat downstairs, one of the bakers can sometimes be seen helping with service of topped sourdough toasts, hot skillets and or hot pressed sandwiches, walking past half a dozen rolling pins recycled as apron hooks on their way to a table.
It was serendipitous that I had ordered a cinnamon swirl cake (£1.75) as a fresh batch was cooking in the oven and it was excellent; nutty, moist, a little bit of gooeyness, with a good glaze – but it could still learn a trick from Cinnamon Square bakery and cafe in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, whose eponymous bun has to be experienced to be believed.
Prior to the cake, a chorizo sausage roll (£3.50) had crumbly pastry topped with poppy seeds, but not enough chorizo for my liking, just a few flecks within the sausage meat.
Returning for breakfast the following morning, armadillo sourdough and flauta were being baked – the latter a slow proofed baby baguette made with olive oil, flour, salt and water that Bakesmiths co-founder Tom Batlle first discovered on a research trip to Barcelona.
After managing bars for 10 years, Tom opened Revival Cafe on Corn Street before founding a cake-making business. Cakesmiths now has a giant bakery in St Phillip’s providing wholesale cakes, traybakes and flapjacks to coffee shops and cafes across the UK. Bakesmiths is their first retail outfit, aiming “to bring the drama and theatre of baking to the high street”.
I ordered a moist espresso chocolate cheesecake from the selection of Cakesmiths items at the counter, washed down by a flat white made with beans roasted in an in-house roaster hidden underneath the stairs.
Up those stairs will be a development bakery and test kitchen, soon hosting evening openings and pop-ups.
Back downstairs is seating on seats and bar stools for some 30 people, with high tables by the counter for those who want to grab and go, or knock back a swift espresso next to concertina windows that are just begging to be flung open on a hot day.
After several years of seeing bars and restaurants come and go in quick succession in this prime corner building, Bakesmiths could finally be the business to make this site work as passers-by are enticed in by the sweet smell of baking.
Bakesmiths, 65 Whiteladies Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 2LY