Peggy Porschen

116 Ebury Street
Belgravia
SW1W 9QQ
Tel: 020 7730 1316
http://www.peggyporschen.com
Blackberry Crumble Cupcake: £5.95*
Hot Chocolate: £4.75*
Green Tea: £3.50*

Welcome to Peggy Porschen, the girly cake cavern in the heart of Belgravia. According to Vanity Fair (and vanity is displayed here more than the cakes are) Peggy P knocks out the best cupcakes in the history of anything ever. Quite a claim. Tell me, Vanity Fair scrivners: have you ever made a batch of Tom and Jerry fairycakes with edible character wafers and chocolate chips brought from the bakery aisle in Tesco? No? Well, I have, and once you add a cherry and a squirt of Jif lemon we’re talking some seriously sensational sweets.

Anyway, I’m here to try a cupcake in my role as blogger/critic/glutton/cake connoisseur and nothing is going to stop me, even the creeping sensation that I have walked into a posing, preening, selfie-seeking melee of overly made-up women decked out in their Sunday best posing with a cake as though sponge and frosting is a sign of having made your mark in the world. Eating cake is not a sign that you are a success that others should seek to emulate. Eating cake is a sign that you like cake. Or it should be. Looking at those seated outside as I queued for a table I didn’t see that much eating going on. Instead I saw people using their phone; and people taking selfies; and people taking group selfies; and people asking the waiting staff to take photos of them; and people taking pictures of the doorway and the decorative toadstools adorning the walls and the cups and the teapots and what their Chanel sunglasses would look like placed on a plate next to their vegan chocolate slice (answer: ridiculous). The cakes themselves could be made of plasticine and rubber sealant. The taste doesn’t seem to be a priority (there is a lot of cake left behind whenever guests leave a table, something that would normally ring alarm bells but which doesn’t surprise me in this context). What matters is being seen to be here, whether you actually like cake or not. I would suggest that sunglasses woman, pouty woman posing in the doorway and surgically-enhanced woman painting her oddly inflated lips couldn’t give two shiny shillings about sponge density or soggy cake bottoms. The desserts look nice, the place is popular with social media influencers and that’s about the end of it. This strikes me as strange, as whilst the cakes do indeed look pretty they don’t necessarily stand out in terms of their decoration. For example, Percy Ingles bakery on Bethnal Green road sells iced fingers with lapis blue icing. Now, I’m not saying that they are better than the cakes available in Peggy Porschen because I’m not a idiot and they actually look revolting, but they stand out on the basis that most cakes aren’t usually blue, yet these oddities aren’t cropping up on Time Out’s top ten places to eat cakes that resemble a science experiment gone wrong.

So, Peggy Porschen is a posuers paradise. We get it, but what is the place like when it isn’t filled with women in ball gowns too scared of cellulite to risk doing anything as foolish as actually eat? Well, it is a pastel pink paradise designed to enchant the little girl hidden beneath the Lancôme and lashes of big girls everywhere (I don’t mean to imply that men won’t get anything out of the experience but the atmosphere is definitely geared towards a more feminine clientele). And what do the cakes taste like, I hear you moan. Well, I’ll tell you. They taste… well, lovely. Yes, it would be easy to dismiss Peggy Porschen as a creation of social media sheep following a long established flock, but the truth is that the cupcake I had – a moist sponge filled with blackberries and jam and decorated with lightly flavoured cream cheese – was delightful. It isn’t the best I’ve ever tasted – the idea of it being the best in the world as espoused by Vanity Fair is the kind of hyperbole that few people actually take seriously, anymore than people would believe a quote on a poster that declared a new Will Ferrell film to be the funniest comedy of the year – but it is genuinely delicious and is made with great care and attention. The same can be said of the hot chocolate (if I’m not boucing off the walls with the most severe sugar rush after this I will consider the trip to have been a failure), beautiful to look at and perfectly rich and creamy. Again, it isn’t the best I’ve ever tasted but it is lovely and I couldn’t help but giggle childishly when it arrived surrounded by a heap of mini marshmallows.

A special mention must also be given for their superb Chinese Yunnan green tea, a subtle, slightly smoky blend that finished off the experience just as Sinatra crooned about waking up in a city that never sleeps. As he had already sung about longing to stray forty minutes earlier I suspect that there is a cassette tape somewhere that needs to be turned over to side B, but as complaints go this is pretty non-existent. The desserts are lovely, the cafe is charming and the service is spot on. Just be sure to duck under the table whenever someone brings out a smartphone. You WILL end up as the ghost at the feast in their next Instagram post, and no one wants to be the strange grimacing head that can’t be cropped during resizing 🧁

*Prices/information correct as of 13.10.19

Feel free to share stories, views and tips in the comments section below. Always fun to hear from fellow teaholics xx