Le Café By Nicolas Rouzaud

My Father's Brioche, and the case around it

My Father's Brioche is the piece to order first, a reimagined childhood classic and the most biographical thing on the menu. Brioche à tête is the other key order and appears in both sweet and savoury forms; in summer the signature version has been served with silky vanilla soft serve and finished with either caramelised pecans or raspberry coulis. Beyond the brioche sit a lemon tart and Nicolas Rouzaud's reading of a Victoria sponge, alongside seasonal work built around fruit and patisserie craft. Rouzaud came to the arcade after Le Bristol in Paris, The Lanesborough and The Connaught, where he was executive pastry chef, and the menu carries that training in the finish rather than in complication. The café was named Pastry & Bakery Opening of the Year at the 2026 La Liste Pastry & Bakery Special Awards.

Drinks built like desserts

The drinks follow the same thinking as the pastry, which is what makes this a café rather than a pastry shop with chairs. The named iced choices are the Iced Ube Latte and the Matcha Cloud, and both are constructed for texture as much as flavour, closer to a dessert in a glass than a coffee with syrup added. Pastries are made daily to be eaten at their peak, so the case is a shorter and more changeable list than a bakery's, and the drink is meant to be chosen with the pastry rather than after it. Ube gives the latte a nutty, faintly vanilla sweetness that reads as a dessert flavour rather than a coffee one, and the Matcha Cloud is built around the texture of the foam as much as the tea underneath it.

An all-day room in Burlington Arcade

Le Café is the first café to open inside London's Burlington Arcade, and it is built for lingering rather than for a quick counter transaction. The rhythm runs from morning coffee through afternoon pastry to a leisurely lunch and late cocktails, a wider arc than most pastry-led rooms attempt. The interiors put a deep red gourmand world beneath the arcade's historic arches, translating the pâtisserie into the design rather than decorating around it. Limited editions tie the pastry to what is happening nearby: a Wimbledon tennis ball dessert of pistachio crunch, vanilla and orange blossom cream with strawberry and elderflower compote, a Strawberry Sandwich alongside it, and the Blahnik Brioche, made with lemon and violet for Manolo Blahnik's Manolo's Maps.