A Pimlico Journal investigation into London’s flourishing dessert cafés

Iftar, bro?

I barrel out of Nobu in dismay as much as disgust. The smell of oud would not have allowed me to stomach any sort of dessert, not that I eat dessert anyway (grow up). Apparently ordering dessert as a man gives women the ‘ick’ — meaning ‘trivial hormonal disgust reflex’ — though this all depends her own sugar consumption.

I happened upon a Caffe Concerto, a somewhat mysterious chain that you will often see in the West End. To my surprise, it was moderately busy, albeit on a Saturday evening. I entered only to seek out the lavatory, and was greeted by a cheap imitation of the dining rooms of The Ritz: white, glossed walls, velvet chairs, and lavish gold cutlery; imagine if Marie Antoinette had a car boot sale at Versailles before being marched away by the fishwives of Paris, but worse in every single way. Caffe Concerto claims to be a ‘restaurant chain’, but really it is a patisserie that also happens to serve a limited Italian menu.

Pimlico Journal is a London-based publication, but I would guess that not even 2% of readers will have ever visited a Caffe Concerto, despite the chain boasting nineteen London locations, mostly in the very centre of the city. This is for good reason. It really has no place in London, and you realise this immediately once you observe the clientele. The Real Housewives of Baghdad gossiping with their daughters for hours on end over a single cup of tea and baklava, scowling at girls for having their midriffs exposed (apparently being a gluttonous, obese lard-arse scoffing down plate after plate of kadayif is far more virtuous). Meanwhile, their sons are flirting with Russian bimbos in Nobu; their husbands are discussing geopolitics all evening on Edgware Road, huffing and puffing on their shisha pipes as if to summon the ghost of Yasser Arafat himself. I imagine the first Indo-European charioteers had the same feeling of revulsion when they tore through Europe: obese, lactose intolerant, matriarchal Venus figurines lounging around doing nothing in the Longhouse.

I, the milk-drinking steppe nomad, took some time to ponder what I had just seen as I pissed out the nights Riesling. Why was Caffe Concerto so full of Arabs? It occurred to me that most of the world has no serious dessert tradition. In fact, almost every dessert served in the Orient amounts to nothing more than sugary slop. Sugar, fried sugar, refried sugar, sugar topped with sugar, and sugar dissolved in boiling water: these ‘ingredients’ will form the base of most desserts over there, and it shows in the staggering obesity rates, especially in the Middle East and the Subcontinent. If you have ever had a Turkish delight you will know exactly what I mean.

You have probably seen the headline obesity statistics coming out of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — perhaps unsurprising for oil sheikhdoms that lack for nothing, one might say. But you cannot attribute Arab obesity levels to oil wealth alone. Nearly three-fifths of women in impoverished Egypt are obese. Syria boasts an obesity level comparable to Great Britain, which did not seem absurd until someone reliably informed me that there has been a civil war raging over there for thirteen years now. Palestine, Iraq, and Libya all have obesity rates comparable to America, especially considering their level of development, and yet will still somehow deride the Americans for their supposed gluttony. The man on the telly has been telling me that there will be an imminent food shortage in the West Bank next week — he’s been saying this for six months already — but in reality, the Data will suggest the opposite. Fatima should save that fifth box of baklava for next week and learn how to bake.

Caffe Concerto gives me the same uncanny feeling that I get from the Angus Steakhouse restaurants that pepper the West End. Not good enough to merit having dozens of spots in Britain’s most expensive area, but somehow they are still there. The eye test checks out: foot traffic at these Angus Steakhouse restaurants is considerable, and I imagine they function solely as tourist traps for clueless travellers who find pubs intimidating, but cannot afford Gaucho (another tourist trap). It could also be the case that they are money laundering fronts — in the same vein as the ‘American Candy Stores’ that have now metastasised onto Oxford Street — but even to someone as suspicious as me, these establishments do ultimately have an undeniable air of legitimacy.

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This cannot be said for the ‘dessert cafés’ that have recently popped up across Greater London. These are establishments that, much like the ‘American Candy Stores’, seem to attest as much to the breathtaking ineptitude of HMRC as they do to demographic and cultural change. Let me explain why.

After my Nobu review, some readers suggested that I gather more secondary research; that I make use of more Data and Analysis when writing these articles, rather than going by my own (highly astute) primary observations. I thought nobody else had picked up on this dessert café trend, but in fact the Mumsnet faithful had of course already sussed out the nature of these places before I had even considered writing this piece. In line with my own observations, they suggest that chains like Creams Cafe and Kaspas have no footfall whatsoever except the odd sixth-former after school. In some locations they don’t even have menus, and nobody picks up the phone if you want to order. Strange, when you can find at least three of these types of establishment on any given high street, though most readers will not have noticed them (they seem to consistently fly under the radar of locals). The case for some of these dessert cafés in fact being mere fronts for money laundering becomes even stronger when you consider that they have very little in the way of overheads and only ever need three members of staff (at best) to work them. There have been isolated instances of pastry shops in Glasgow and Liverpool being used as fronts to launder drug money, but nothing in the news has appeared as of yet to explain the massive surge in the numbers of dessert cafés all around London.

As part of my secondary research, I went on Companies House. I discovered that both of these chains were founded and are run by Pakistanis, and the plurality of branches are situated in Asian-majority areas. Secondary research done. On the surface, this seems fair enough: the logic is that young Asians need to socialise in places that do not serve alcohol (euphemism for ‘no whites’, if we are being frank). A policy wonk will perhaps suggest that dessert cafés are also ideal for under-18s who cannot legally drink. This is a big stretch: ‘Let’s go out to the dessert café’ is simply not in the British vernacular; these are words that have never been uttered on these isles. Kids are not spending £8 on a milkshake when McDonald’s is serving more or less the same thing across the road at a fraction of the price. British kids are drinking vodka in parks with their friends, not spending £30 on two sundaes to be served by a functionally illiterate dependant from Lahore. The whole idea of a ‘dessert café’ is at best an American fad — much like the ‘diners’ that never really took off anywhere except service stations — not a real cultural fixture for the white British population.

As such, many readers might assume that these establishments survive solely off of an Asian, and especially an Asian Muslim, clientele. After all, South Asians do famously have a sweet tooth. One could imagine them arriving late in large groups for ‘Iftar’, spending big money gorging on sugary slop after a long, Northern European day of fasting. But in reality, you might be surprised to learn that Asians are not really frequenting them either, though you would have to be a seasoned armchair anthropologist, as I am, to know why. Should you ever go to one of these places, you will notice that the tubs of ice cream on display are largely untouched. This is because the rate of lactose intolerance in India and Pakistan is 60%, with figures reaching a staggering 80% in Bangladesh. The figures among the diaspora in Britain correspond with those numbers. The implication is clear: how can a business whose products almost all contain some form of dairy possibly target these demographics in the first place? South Asians do indeed enjoy sugar, but these are dessert cafés serving the wrong type of desserts. Most of their customers would be spending their time on the toilet in mild pain. In fact, once you filter out ethnicities with high levels of lactose intolerance, you are left with only white Europeans and Somalis.

These South Asian demographics also have the highest rates of diabetes in the country, with Pakistanis leading the way at 25%. You could make the case that Kaspas is waging nutritional warfare on the Mirpuri ethnos, though this is somewhat undermined by just how empty it always is — more likely that they do this to themselves, mostly at home. Anyway, it is interesting that this is not brought up even among those on the Right. How is it that our health service can be subject to the terrible dietary habits of people who have yet to make the connection between the food they consume and their health? The rate of diabetes in Pakistan itself is at least 30%. The Generals who rule that country ought to consider this a national security threat. One American blockade could rack up a death toll in the tens of millions within a month. Somehow, through the powers that be, Nicholas (now 31 ans) will end up paying for all this. Gluttony is not just a deadly sin; even worse, it is highly expensive.

The lack of interest in these establishments among South Asian Muslims is also a matter of income. This is not a wealthy demographic. In many of these areas, spending £15 on a sundae is straight up unaffordable. People simply do not spend like this; they would rather settle for a Nando’s.

It is rather dubious how many of these places are licensed to stay open until so late — much later than pubs, and almost as late as some nightclubs. I haven’t loitered around Whitechapel in the late hours to know how busy these joints are then, but who is buying ice cream at 2am on a Tuesday? The street racers on the A10? The Sultans of Slough diving in for a pitstop in the Mirpur Grand Prix? This must be what everyone means by ‘stakeholder engagement’: community elders holding enough sway with the Council that an ice cream parlour can somehow get a nightclub license to provide service at night during Ramadan.

It might seem tedious to hyperfixate on dessert cafés when there many other types of establishment that serve as fronts for money laundering in London, but I really do hate dessert. With dessert out of the question, pubs shutting at the Woke hours of 11pm, and the Garrick now admitting women, I am left with nowhere to go except Soho(e) House or a Shisha lounge on Curzon Street. Nightlife in London is confirmed finished until further notice.