The best croissants in North London

The best croissants in North London

The Best Croissants in North London

Introduction

There is a particular kind of Saturday morning magic that happens in North London. It begins with a crack of cold air, a still-quiet street, and the almost indecent smell of butter doing something extraordinary in a hot oven. It ends with you, croissant in hand, wondering why you ever considered a sad supermarket version an acceptable breakfast. The good news is that this part of the city has never had more reason to get out of bed early. From ancient-grain laminated pastries in Holloway to Le Cordon Bleu pistachio croissants in Muswell Hill, North London's artisan bakery scene is producing some of the finest viennoiserie in the country — and if weekend breakfast delivery London is more your pace, we'll get to that too. But first, the places worth lacing your shoes up for.

The Best Croissants in North London

1. Astrid Bakery — Muswell Hill

Location: 118A Alexandra Park Road, Muswell Hill, N10 2AH | Rating: 4.8 | Hours: Tues–Sun, 8:00am–3:00pm

Charlotte O'Kelly left fashion journalism, enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, and the result is one of the most quietly extraordinary little bakeries in North London. The queue outside the tiny Alexandra Park Road shopfront on a weekend morning tells you everything you need to know before you've even caught the smell. Her pistachio croissants are the stuff of local legend — properly laminated, richly filled, and gone well before noon. The passionfruit meringue croissant is a bold move that absolutely pays off, and the Italian hot chocolate cruffin has developed its own devoted following. As a bonus, every breakfast box sold contributes to Magic Breakfast charity, so the indulgence has a genuinely warm heart.

Visit Astrid Bakery

2. Tarn Bakery — Archway

Location: 83 Hazellville Road, Archway, N19 3NB | Rating: 4.8 | Hours: Tues, 8:30am–2:00pm; Wed–Fri, 8:00am–3:00pm; Sat, 9:00am–3:00pm

Opened in December 2023 by Florin Grama (formerly of Pophams and Flor) and Felix Ortona Coles, Tarn is the kind of bakery that other bakers talk about reverentially. Operating from a tiny shopfront on the Archway–Highgate border just four days a week, every detail here is considered to a quietly obsessive degree — UK wheat from Bruern Farms and Gilchesters, dairy from The Estate Dairy, chocolate from Pump Street. The almond croissant is textbook-perfect and then some, the cardamom buns are warmly spiced and beautifully burnished, and the sourdough loaves are the sort of thing you eat half of on the walk home without guilt. Plan your week around its Wednesday to Saturday hours.

Visit Tarn Bakery

3. Sourdough Sophia — Crouch End

Location: 24 Middle Lane, Crouch End, N8 8PL | Rating: 4.7 | Hours: Daily, 8:40am–4:30pm

Sophia Sutton Jones started this in her dining room during lockdown in 2020, and what began as a neighbourhood micro-bakery experiment is now a four-location North London institution. The Middle Lane flagship is where it all started, and it still feels like a discovery. The hand-laminated croissants sit alongside matcha chocolate slices, iced cinnamon buns, and spinach and feta swirls — a menu that shifts between French tradition and something altogether more playful. Featured in the Retail Bulletin in December 2025 and named among British Baker's best small artisan bakeries, Sourdough Sophia earns every bit of its reputation. Open daily, which is a mercy.

Visit Sourdough Sophia

4. Holloway Model Bakery — Holloway

Location: 66 Georges Road, Holloway, N7 8HX | Rating: 4.6 | Hours: Daily, 9:00am–3:00pm

Michelle Eshkeri already built one beloved bakery in Margot Bakery in East Finchley, and in August 2022 she did it again. Holloway Model Bakery has settled deeply into the heart of its neighbourhood — a proper community café and artisan bakery that feels genuinely welcoming, not performatively so. The rotating counter is a joy: croissants and pain au chocolat sit alongside apple custard danishes, almond bear claws, babka, brioche iced buns, and Victoria plum slices. It's open seven days a week, which puts it in rare and enviable company. Reviewed by the Good Food Guide and championed by the community it so clearly adores.

Visit Holloway Model Bakery

5. Boulangerie Pierre Alix — Muswell Hill

Location: 222 Muswell Hill Broadway, Muswell Hill, N10 3SH | Rating: 4.5 | Hours: Mon–Sat, 8:00am–6:00pm; Sun, 8:00am–5:00pm

If you close your eyes, take a breath, and let the butter-scented air do its work, there is a brief, convincing moment when Muswell Hill Broadway becomes a Paris arrondissement. Pierre Alix brings genuine French baking tradition to this corner of North London — sourdough baguettes with proper crust, croissants with proper lamination, pain au chocolat that doesn't apologise for itself, and a kouign-amann that absolutely should be ordered on every visit. The tarts are seasonal and carefully made. This is a boulangerie with real technique behind it, and Muswell Hill residents are the luckier for it.

Visit Boulangerie Pierre Alix

6. Jolene Big Jo — Holloway

Location: 318–326 Hornsey Road, Holloway, N7 7HE | Rating: 4.5 | Hours: Mon, 8:00am–3:00pm; Tue–Sun, 8:00am–4:00pm

The bigger, bolder sibling of the acclaimed Newington Green Jolene, Big Jo brings the same extraordinary provenance-led philosophy to a large, light-filled space on Hornsey Road — and there's a full all-day dining menu to keep you anchored once you've sat down with your first pastry. What sets Jolene apart is its commitment to milling its own flour from ancient, non-hybridised grain varieties grown using horse-drawn machinery, and that depth of intention carries through unmistakably into every laminated pastry on the counter. Michelin-recognised at group level and recommended by Eater London, this is a serious place that somehow still feels entirely relaxed about it.

Visit Jolene Big Jo

7. Dunn's Bakery — Crouch End

Location: 6 The Broadway, Crouch End, N8 9SN | Rating: 4.4 | Hours: Tues–Fri, 7:00am–6:00pm; Sat, 6:00am–6:00pm; Sun, 7:00am–5:00pm

There is no bakery in North London — perhaps in all of London — with a story quite like Dunn's. The family has been baking on Crouch End Broadway in an unbroken line since 1820, and Lewis Freeman, sixth-generation baker, is now the one in the whites. Over two centuries of institutional knowledge live in this large, welcoming shopfront, expressed through handmade sourdoughs, babka, jam doughnuts, sausage rolls, and traditional celebration cakes. It is living heritage in the best possible sense — not a museum, but a genuinely busy, genuinely loved neighbourhood bakery that simply happens to have been at it since the Regency era. The Saturday 6am opening hour alone earns it enormous respect.

Visit Dunn's Bakery

8. Boulangerie Bon Matin — Finsbury Park

Location: 178 Tollington Park, Finsbury Park, N4 3AJ | Rating: 4.3 | Hours: Mon–Fri, 7:00am–4:30pm; Sat–Sun, 7:00am–5:30pm

Run by the same husband-and-wife team since 2010, Boulangerie Bon Matin is one of the longest-established independent French bakeries in North London, and its loyal neighbourhood following after fifteen-plus years tells its own story. The space is a proper pleasure — bare brick walls, a conservatory-roofed dining room, and the daily rhythm of freshly made viennoiseries, croissants, pain au chocolat, and sourdough baguettes coming off the counter. Featured in Time Out and Hot Dinners, it remains one of those understated local institutions that reveals itself slowly and then becomes somewhere you simply go on a Sunday morning without really deciding to.

Visit Boulangerie Bon Matin

What If Getting There Isn't an Option?

There is a certain irony to the golden age of London artisan baking coinciding with the era in which none of us seem to have any time. Saturdays that should be for wandering down to Crouch End or Muswell Hill Broadway have a habit of filling themselves with other plans, tired legs, small children, or simply the very reasonable desire not to leave the house in February. It's here that the demand for genuinely good breakfast delivery London — not a meal-kit, not a supermarket workaround, but actual hand-laminated pastries and proper sourdough bread subscription London services — has grown from a pandemic-era convenience into something that feels increasingly like a reasonable life choice.

What's particularly encouraging is that the best of the new wave of artisan breakfast delivery services in London are built around the same values as the bakeries above: sustainable food delivery London built on zero waste principles, pastry subscription UK models that flex around your life rather than demanding rigid commitment, and a growing emphasis on bike delivery food London that keeps carbon footprints low and pastries arriving in genuinely good condition. The artisan bakery is no longer exclusively a destination. It can, increasingly, come to you.

Butter & Crust: Bringing the Bakery to Your Door

If you've fallen in love with the kind of baking you'll find at places like Tarn or Astrid but your weekend schedule doesn't always cooperate, this is where Butter & Crust earns a warm mention. Working directly with the best independent artisan producers in London, Butter & Crust delivers sourdough, pastries, and weekend breakfast goods to your door by 9am — so the Saturday morning coffee ritual gets the croissant it deserves, without anyone having to queue in the cold.

In inner London, delivery is by bicycle, which keeps things both sustainable and swift. All packaging is fully recyclable, and because everything is baked to order, there is zero food waste built into the model — a rarity that genuinely matters. The subscription is refreshingly human: pause it, skip a week, or cancel entirely, no obstacle course required. Currently covering most of Zones 1 to 3 (with more of the city coming soon), it's a proper artisan sourdough London subscription that sits somewhere between a luxury and a very sensible weekend habit. Think of it as your local bakery, delivered — before you've even made the coffee.

Find out more at butterandcrust.com

Sources

  • Good Food Guide — Tarn Bakery and Holloway Model Bakery reviews
  • Hot Dinners — Astrid Bakery, Tarn Bakery, and Boulangerie Bon Matin features
  • Time Out — Boulangerie Bon Matin feature
  • Retail Bulletin — Sourdough Sophia feature, December 2025
  • British Baker — Sourdough Sophia named among best small artisan bakeries
  • Eater London — Jolene Big Jo recommendation
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