Café Pedlar

You're walking down Lower Marsh in Waterloo, past the railway arches, and you catch that unmistakable smell of fresh bread. Café Pedlar is doing the kind of baking that makes you understand why people queue. Their sourdough is properly fermented (you can taste it), the croissants have that shatter-and-butter thing going on, and they're not pretentious about any of it. The space itself is unfussy—whitewashed walls, communal tables, actual humans working the counter who know their stuff. It's become the sort of place where regulars grab breakfast before heading anywhere else in South London, which tells you everything. Coffee's decent too, though the bread's the real star.