Cucumber Alley in the Seven Dials Market Covent Garden London
London is not short of good dessert spots and markets, but to have one that gathers some of London’s best dessert offerings (and savoury) in one alley is a blessing. The newly opened Cucumber Alley, in the Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden, has achieved just that. 7 independent traders are on one little alley making for a foodie’s dream! In this post we detail each trader and their offerings and our experience of those we tried.
View full details here.
Boolay Crepes
It’s only right that we start with the spot with the most hype around it. London foodies will be aware of the insta-famous Yolkin of Chinatown and they’ll also be aware of the sad news of a couple months ago when they closed their doors for good. News that saddened foodies close and far. Well, fast foward a couple months and they’ve returned with a different, new and a very innovative dessert. What is the innovative dessert? It is basically crepes shaped into a cone and then filled with crème brûlée filling. Sounds insane right? Genius and so creative! London foodies have flocked here to try this and all I’ve seen is overwhelming postiive reviews. Unfortunately, we didn’t enjoy it as much as everyone else as we personally prefer the crème brûlée to be hot, this one was cold. However, you can’t not applaud the creativity here. Very impressive. They’ve also introduced a couple new flavours: pandan and hazelnut. We only tried the original, but would love to have tried the pandan one. Nonetheless, this is a spot you have to visit and try the crème brûlée crepe cone. Quick fact: the name (Boolay) comes from how the owner’s daughter pronounces brûlée – cute!
Naanstop Express
Do we all agree that Indian street food is the best street food in the world? Well this spot right here, amongst creative food traders, is offering some absolute classic Indian street food dishes. You can get the most popular dishes that you’d find in the streets of India. We ordered pani puri and a bombay sandwich. Unfortunately, the pani puri tasted stale and far from being fresh. It is a dish that is made of three elements: crunchy puri, spicy pani and flavourful filling. With the puri being stale, the crunch is lost and without the crunch this dish is lacking. Shame that as we were excited to try this. The bombay sandwich, on the other hand, was incredible! A vegetarian spicy sandwich of your dreams! Quite possibly the best single dish we had here.
Wheelcake Island
This place is bringing traditional Taiwanese pancakes, known as wheelcakes, to the city of London. Wheelcakes are small, fluffy and soft pancakes that are filled with yummy goodness such as vanilla custard, chocoalte and matcha. They also have regular limited edition flavours such as biscoff and pumpkin. It is about the size of a palm, so you can easily pick up a few and munch on them as you explore the rest of the market. They’re good enough to take home too and have the next day (like we did) – it was still super delicious! We got the vanilla custard one and didn’t regret this one bit!
View menu here.
Oshpaz Dumplings
If you haven’t tried Uzbek food yet, run to a place near you to try it! Unfortunately, as you try to search the nearest one now, you probably won’t find much. Bringing flavours from the silk road into luscious food, Uzbekistan really is a cusine that needs to be put on the map. Oshpaz have taken the responsibility to bring London authentic Uzbek food. So, now Londoners can sample delicious Plov and their famous dumplings too. They’ve got more than one branch in London, but this one in the Cucumber Alley does dumplings only. Their dumplings were delicious to be fair – nice flavourful beef (not meaty) with some chilli flakes and some sour cream, which was different to what we’re used to when normally having dumplings. Overall, another great spot to great a little snack – as the dumplings aren’t too filling.
View menu here.
Soft Serve Society
Soft Serve Society have been around for a while. They have a branch in Boxpark Shoreditch and also an international one in Saudi Arabia. Their new branch is this one here in Cucumber Alley. As the name suggests, they specialise in soft serve ice cream and very aesthetic may I add. They also do sundaes and pretty looking drinks. We got the charcoal coconut ice cream, how could you not with that dramatic colour? Overall, this may be our favourite spot here even if individually we had better dishes.
View menu here.
The following two we did not try anything at this time round unfortunately.
Deekenek
They are known for their waffles and to be honest their waffles definitely do look good. They want to bring the waffle back to the forefront of the dessert scene. Definitely going back for those!
Ong Ong Buns
For all your Chinese baked goodies, this is your stop. As mentioned, we didn’t try anything from here this time, but if this is like any other Chinese bakery, you have to try a pandan bun or roll.
Getting there
Nearest station: Covent Garden
Nearest mosque: Muslim World League Goodge Street (10 minute walk)
Parking: Ossulston Street – free evenings and weekends – plenty of parking spaces on Sundays – about 20-30 min walk from Soho/Chinatown, but it is just outside congestion zone
[…] Cucumber Alley of Seven Dials Market in London. 0 5 By Halal Xplorer England Food London June 15, 2022 Boolay Crepes: […]