The Pudding Bar

I finally succumbed for the want of a good crumble, to be drizzled in dessert; lured in by the talk of this parlour’s sweet treats that have surfaced in Soho.
I could only ignore it for so long.
«Bar me from the Pudding Bar», I declared to my dinner dates on previous occasions. Save me from pop-​ups to save my buttons popping off, I’ve said before! This was a danger spot I had been trying to abstain from. However, London, one of the most brilliant cities in the world has a severe lack of dessert bars and… one has opened… next to another, that’s rather well renowned.
In sweet anticipation, the dining floor was a mystery. From outside the windows were concealed, steamy and condensed.
Filled with dessert diners the place was packed and around us in various stages of carb comas; a table of girls screeching in hysterical fits of sugar rushes and other deserters missing main courses to delve into third cake base, all delirious from sweet overload.
As we entered I was not hit by heavenly sweet smells, but by a damp mouldy mix of mildew with an unsavoury sweaty pong. (It was raining and there weren’t enough windows open, but for the amount of calories this gimmicky place gurks out onto Greek St, carb-​karma awaits. There are a lot of stairs.)
So in this Bikram-​come-​bakery, we were thankfully hiked away from the offensive odours on the opening floor, up past the kitchen where comforting smells of burnt sugar and butter caramelising, reassuringly followed us to the top.
Sold to, like ice to the Eskimos, I had the menus profile picture of the classic Baked Alaska with maple meringue. Although I favoured the sturdy looking ball of ice cream stacked on apple cake over everything else offered, I’d like to have said I crumbled to the Pudding Bar’s charms, but no such crumble was there.
Neither was any sort of ‘Pudding’ really, nor sponge, nor custard! No signs of anything puddingy at all. I understand PB, indeed why would you alight at Soho to if anything not be enlightened.
So what else could our pudding party have from the menu?
(Done to) Death-​by-​chocolate; a bore of a Smores Cheesecake. Cheesecake?!? (Urgh, how easy is cheesecake and for chocolate satisfaction that’s it).
For the tangy fancier of you; Lemon Polenta cake. Now since Nigella has taught us all how to perfect pouting and polenta cake, a restaurant’s offering that is dry and not in the slightest lemony, unadventurous in presentation is a plain as plain flour, lazy.
Feeling cold towards this stinky stuffy space is just the tip of the iceberg.
I know it’s a pop-​up, but slap dash décor, falling to pieces furniture, chipped miss matched grannies crockery; charmless! Acceptable in Hackney 10 years ago, but since this style has franchised itself out and branded itself as trendy. Now it’s just pretentious. So passé.
PB, has (like my belt holes) stretched it’s residency into the new year, so please Pud your money where you’re mouth is and perfect the menu, craft those recipes until you’re shit hot as molten chocolate good at them and then call yourselves a Pudding Bar.
Until then, I’m Pudding it past me. Next time I’m gonna stop for the weightily moist cakes, glistening in the window, sliding onto the glass shelves next door.
Pudding a dessert bar next to the famous Maison Bertaux?! What a sweet cheek!

Good concept as there are not many places in the area where you can linger over just dessert. This was my second visit since opening almost a month ago, however I doubt that I shall be returning. Simply because the pudding bar does not cater well for those with nut allergies. Of the 7 desserts on the menu only the Eton mess is nut free. There is also the cheese selection but I dislike cheese so would rather not eat if that were the only option.
Since I had already tried the Eton mess on my first visit I had come this time especially for the baked Alaska, however upon ordering the server informed me that the sponge in the baked Alaska contains nuts! The nut presence in the baked Alaska is not stated on the menu unlike the other desserts so if I had not enquired I would have mistakenly consumed nuts. All that they could offer nut free was a selection of ice cream, quite frankly I would rather walk a few hundred metres away to gelupo for decent gelato than have ice cream at the pudding bar.
I eventually settled for a modified version of the buttermilk pannacotta without the almond crumble. Normally I would not have chosen this dessert, it just looked rather ordinary something I could easily prepare myself with just 3 shop bought ingredients. Even my friend who has a sweet tooth and is a big pudding fan was unimpressed. She had higher expectations after I told her about the involvement of a former Gordon Ramsey chef at the pudding bar.
Sadly unless the menu at the pudding bar changes to offer more tempting nut free desserts I definitely shall not return. This is not asking too much after all nut allergies are not uncommon. Although perhaps some people do not mind ordering the same one nut free dessert each time, that does not include myself it would just bore me ordering and eating the same dish every single time!

As you can tell, I think this amazing dessert+dessert wine pop up is changing its menu in accordance with customer comments.
The Earl Grey panna cotta is now a Buttermilk Panna Cotta, which was a very smooth dessert, albeit comes with very sour raspberry ice cream and the little «crunches» are really not crunchy enough and instead sticks to your teeth! Not too sweet, so this is awesome.
The baked Alaska was really sweet with the cake inside, only had one bite of it so cannot comment on it too much!
Also when discussing this pop up with a friend of mine, he said that the tasting menu is not as good a deal as ordering each dessert separately (£28! when each individual is around £6−7)
To the reviewer before me — there is actually 3 floors in this pop up along a treacherous staircase, so there are definitely more than 5 tables! (I read somewhere that this building has 5 floors — so am unsure whether there are even more seating above).

A 3 month or so pop up at the bottom of Greek Street, just off of Old Compton street, it’s quite small with 5 tables. We snagged the last one as we got in, but it being Sunday night, it wasn’t too busy. We opted for the tasting plate for two (£28) and a dessert wine flight (£15) each. The wines arrived first and we sampled each, possibly a little sweet by themselves and but went well with the desserts. Unfortunately no notes to suggest which wine paired with which dessert but they had an expert on hand to help us out. The desserts themselves were gorgeous, very well put together. S’more cheesecake was light with a hint of ginger, the Choux buns (3 for 2 people, we fought over the last one) with different fillings and a caramel drizzle, a deconstructed Eton Mess of sorts (well, not deconstructed per se, but not smooshed together), Earl Grey Panna Cotta (a little light on the tea flavour though) and finally a Baked Alaska (slightly melted by the time we got to it, in hindsight maybe not a good order to go in). We didn’t get as far as licking the plate, but the forks did a good job of scraping it!
The head guy at the end actually asked how they could do a better job, I just suggested putting a dessert/​wine pairing note to come out with the tasting plate, as it would save having to ask and having someone in who had to explain it every time (apparently the guy who did it wasn’t always there, we were just lucky!).
It’s a really good post dinner space, take a short walk and get some dessert from here, you won’t regret it.

Pudding Bar starts to fill a gap in the London restaurant market, as there is not a place in London that just serve one course — dessert. I went there after dinner as the restaurant we were dining did not serve dessert.
The place was busy when we arrive but lucky we did not have to wait too long before we got a table. We discovered that it has tables over two floors and not just what you see through the shop windows.
I was planning to get the today special but unfortunately it was sold out. So I choice the Banaoffe Delight but to my disappointment I didn’t like the taste as it had a unripe banana flavour.
Instead I swapped with a friend dessert for the S’ More Cheesecake which consisted of a chocolate cheesecake served with peanut butter ice cream. It was a nice dessert but it did get too sweet for me.
Each dessert was beautifully present and was like how you would be serve a dessert in a classy restaurant. But I could not find some thing fromt the dessert I had to woah me and make me want to return to the Pudding Bar any time soon.