Louis Patisserie

You'll find Louis tucked into Heath Street in Hampstead, where locals queue before work for something that actually tastes like breakfast rather than a marketing exercise. The counter's stacked with Parisian-style pastries—croissants that shatter correctly, pain au chocolat that justifies the calories, éclairs that don't apologise for their sugar content. It's the kind of place where people sit with newspapers for hours nursing filter coffee, and nobody minds. The room's modest, a bit worn around the edges, but that's rather the point.