Sophocles Bakery

Don’t try to resist it, truly amazing goodies waiting to eaten. The good is delicious and the price is really good. Worthy of every penny spent there.

Greek Cypriot goodies, a taste from home!
Although I was a bit drunk when I first discovered this place right after a heavy dinner nearby, I really enjoyed their pastries and took some home with me.
Basically theres evertything thats from that side of the world, fresh and just as sweet as they should be. Its cheap and great quality, will definitely visit again.

So, the high street’s bakery. This is a good’un. Sophocles is another of Church Street’s institutions — I’m guessing another relic of the days when much of the local business was Greek Cypriot-​owned. So along with your Eccles cakes and Bakewell tarts you can get your baklavas, shamalis, so on and so forth… Olive bread, tahini bread, halloumi bread (confused staff — no longer Cypriot, it seems — have been known to refer to this as «Spanish bread». I’ll let ‘em off not knowing what the hell it’s called, as it’s excellent). Yup, you can get all sorts down at Sophocles!
But I would say, definitely come here for the bread and the cakes, rather than any of the lunch options, which based on my last experience, are on the disappointing side, if cheap. You get some old fellas (Cypriots? I hope so!) hanging out here during the day, sipping their coffee and shooting the shit. I’d like to join ‘em some time — I am getting on, after all — but I get the feeling that’s probably a better idea in my head than in reality.

I always hold out hope that this bakery is going to change its tune and become as good as it looks but sadly it never does. Next to Curzon, it’d almost be too good to be true to have a proper old-​fashioned greengrocers and bakery next to each other, and it seems it is. There are some good bits and bobs, the baklava for example, but overall everything is often a little on the dry-​side and disappointing. My housemate disagrees though and says its good value. He likes the rock cakes at 50p and the seeded brown loaves. I also once had an avocado and salad sandwich from here, which was a terrible terrible mistake: never mix avocado with butter– eugh (but that was my fault not theirs).

Looordy, do I love me a bakery. You know, those flapjacks oozing with butter and little cakes overflowing with goodness as sweet as my mama’s southern iced tea. Oh lordy, I can hardly contain myself. I walked by Sophecles Bakery and, well, if my stomach didn’t start a’rumblin like the mighty waters of the Mississippi, my name just ain’t Suzanne the Southern Sweet Peach. And that’s my name; you got that?
Sometimes though, I walk into a bakery and I feel me like a good look around before I buy. But that there lady behind the counter, well honey let me tell you, she looked at me expectantly with her black eyed peas of peepers and asked me what I wanted before I had me a good gander at what it was there to eat. She made me feel a bit like someone forgot to serve me my sausage links with my morning gritz, looordy, a bit nervous, uncomfortable. So, I felt compelled to get something even though I wasn’t too sure I wanted to get one of their little sweet thangs. I got a caramel square, a caramel bit with a consistency like condensed milk on a grainy biscuit topped in chocolate. They had big pieces of sweet cinnamon bread for 80, which I almost got instead. But I didn’t.
I tell you, this here caramel-​chocolate concoction, I was between loving it and not loving it like when you wanna bake yourself in the hot southern sun ’cause it feel so mmm mmm good, but it gives you a sunburn. I decided after comparing it to my mamas home cookin’, that it was lacking a bit of zest, but that it was alright in all.

This bakery tends to smell better than its products taste, but all the same has such a huge array of choice that it is worth a visit. If you get the bread fresh then it’s lovely, but eat it while it’s still fresh because it won’t keep. They have a freshly made sandwich and roll service that I’ve never used, because there are better sandwich places in the area, but the selection appears to be ok. The choices of bread include granary, standard brown, white bloomer, white square, pitta bread, bagels, sesame loafs and much more. Not all of these are tried and tested, but as I say, it seems to be the rule that as long as you catch it fresh, it’s good.