As eagle-eyed Fortess Road-ers will already have spied, Amaury, Matthieu and Alex from the nearby Authentique Epicerie are the new owners of the Tufnell Park Bakery, barely five minutes after much-loved Spence shut its doors.
So what can we expect? “Our vision has always been to ship artisanal high quality products, representing the diversity and quality that the various regions of France (and French-speaking countries) can offer,” says Alex. “This is what we’ve done with Authentique for the past three years, sharing these products and their stories to the locals in our bar and shop.”
The boys always planned to go beyond just importing and sharing, however. “We want to bring in a know-how related to artisanal production,” he says. “Baking made sense to us from the start, it’s the quintessential French know-how when it comes to gastronomy.”
They found a “great baker”, Mathieu Lagrange, from the Northern Rhone who joined the team to open sister business The French Market, a bakery, food & wine store in Whetstone, in February this year.
“We now have two bakers and a third one is joining soon, too,” he says. “We make everything from scratch with high quality ingredients, the best flour with no additives and the traditional know-how of French baking.”
When they were offered the site on Fortess Road, “it made sense to us,” he says, “we had to do it. We’ve always had demands for French bread and pastries at Authentique. So we now have the capacity to bake fresh daily at The French Market in Whetstone and deliver it to this small retail space every morning.”
As well as bread in all its many 2021 guises, you can also expect “the classics” on the menu, from flaky croissants and pastries to gourmet sandwiches and coffee.
Tufnell Park Bakery will open at the end of the month at 146A Fortess Rd, NW5 2HP. Follow @tufnellparkbakery for the latest.
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