It's Sunday morning, time for coffee and a nice pastry.
You could go anywhere today, the outside world is rammed with interesting places to go. There are parks and palaces, gardens and galleries, museums and markets, shops and stadiums, woods and wildernesses, all kinds of possible places to visit. You could go out for a jog, a bike ride or a ramble, maybe take the train somewhere interesting and mooch around a bit. But all you really need to do is stick a few clothes on, target a nearby cafe and settle down for coffee and a nice pastry.
Time was when Sundays would have meant a trip to church but nobody does that any more, certainly not those who prefer coffee and a nice pastry. These days the gathering point is the cafe on the corner down the street, or maybe the special patisserie you saw on TikTok somewhere halfway across town. It still means sitting for an hour in communion, but that's communing with family and friends instead of listening to some pastor drone on, plus you get a lot more to drink and something more substantial than a wafer.
There might be a queue but that just goes to show how popular coffee and a nice pastry has become. Nobody minds standing outside a cafe and watching everyone else enjoying their selection because it confirms how excellent the upcoming experience will be. Ideally it's a cafe with a scattering of outside tables so you can spy on which pastry they picked and whether you might want a different one, also watch each group with increasing frustration as they finish their last mouthful and then just sit around gabbing for ages when they could be clearing the way for you to grab the table instead.
You need never get bored when it comes to coffee and a nice pastry. There are more types of coffee than you can shake a stick at, plus a multiplicity of special milks and syrups to create a truly unique blend. As for pastries you could have a different one every weekend for a lifetime and still not repeat, that is so long as you vary your cafe regularly and don't simply return every week to the same limited selection. Is the flavour sweet or savoury, is the pastry laminated, choux or brioche, and would you like your fruit filling to be apple, apricot or mostly custard? No Sunday is ever the same when you plump for coffee and a nice pastry.
If done properly, a coffee and a nice pastry is just a really good excuse to leave the house. You can't stay in all day slobbing on the sofa watching Netflix, tackling some tedious DIY task or playing some multi-player shoot-em-up against unseen opponents. But you can do all these things if you go out first for coffee and a nice pastry because it won't take long and then the rest of the day is yours to waste away as you best see fit.
You could make coffee at home but a shop-frothed cup is always nicer, plus the barista with the quirky beard always makes a pretty swirl you could never do yourself. Likewise you could have bought pastries from a supermarket the day before and simply warm them up in your microwave, but selecting a fresh one from the counter always delivers a finer mouthful. Likely they didn't really bake it this morning, it originated from a shed on a trading estate somewhere in zone 4 and was delivered by van last night, but the illusion of curated provenance is all important when selecting coffee and a nice pastry.
It won't be cheap because these pastries cost a small fortune for the few sweet mouthfuls they ultimately deliver. You could enjoy an entire box of Mr Kipling at home for half the price, or even heaven forfend learn how to bake your own. But inevitably it's all about convenience, relying on someone else to do the hard work so you can slump with friends and debate the football, Strictly, what nextdoor's cat has been up to or why it is that Oxford Street already has its Christmas decorations up. A coffee and a nice pastry is one of life's simplest pleasures, well worth the unnecessary cost.
Saturday is the day for dashing around and exerting yourself, getting chores done and keeping busy. Sunday by contrast is a day to unwind, especially if last night was heavy, and ideally for meeting up with friends. A local patisserie is the ideal destination with the promise of easy refreshment barely any distance away. The entrepreneurs who open cafes know this, ensuring every neighbourhood has an attractive-looking window display of baked goods and a multi-levered machine capable of adding milk to beans, with adequate counter space to accommodate the weekday commute and just enough tables to cater for the Sunday rush. Grabbing coffee and a nice pastry has never been easier.
If you've not seen Mags and Kian for months why not agree to meet them in Kilburn at that cafe you saw on TikTok? An hour's catch-up is all you really need, then maybe a short walk or just slink back to the station, obligation met. You can always delay the initial rendezvous until noon and call it brunch if you need a longer lie-in, or nip in really early at nine to dodge the queues that'll inevitably build up later as everyone comes out for coffee and a nice pastry.
Coffee and a nice pastry can also be a status symbol if shared properly on social media. It's all about the plumpness of the pastry, the shininess of the glazing and the succulence of the fruit. You can't go wrong with a cronut or cinnamon bun artfully arranged, and there are always bonus points for alexandertorte, knieküchle or multi-coloured macarons. For added kudos be sure to tag your vanilla slice as #mille-feuille and your apple turnover as #chausson-aux-pommes, otherwise all your attempts at perfect framing will have gone to waste.
Obviously independent cafes are best but feel free to lower yourself to a chain outlet if you must. Gail's is plainly the pinnacle, as all the yummy mummies and young professionals locally already know. Perhaps dodge Paul because it shows a total lack of originality, and never risk Greggs as they don't have sufficient tables. Remember that any outlet whose name is coffee-focused is likely to be less talented on the cake front, also that any old-school bakery that still makes Chelsea buns won't have a clue how to froth a drink. A one-off with a fancy name is always best for coffee and a nice pastry.
Few can resist the addictive allure of coffee and a nice pastry. No need to debate how to fill your Sunday morning, merely where, and the precise details of what to pick can wait until you get there. Sure it's expensive for what it is, but if you'd all travelled across town to some alternative attraction somewhere it would've cost much more, so coffee and a nice pastry is inevitably the cheaper option.
You could always make a game of it, trying to tick off the most ridiculous flavour combinations week after week. Just one outlet could allow you to catalogue a Honey & Smoked Salt bun, a Marmite, Schlossberger & Spring Onion swirl, a Bacon & Maple Danish and a Cross-laminated Gianduja over the course of a month, then switch venues and you can work through saffron, vanilla, pastel de nata and signature fig sourdough as the weeks proceed. The more artisan the better when it comes to coffee and a nice pastry.
Every Sunday more and more people make a pilgrimage across town to join the back of a line of millennials 40 strong, edging forwards towards an understaffed counter to order a few carbs and a locally-ground drink before grabbing a bench seat and snapping a photo of something that'll take 30 seconds to gulp down. The new mantra has become "where can we meet up and eat? ...anywhere on trend will do", and all because it's Sunday morning, time for coffee and a nice pastry.
