Arapina - London

This place is fantastic for vegan pastries and offers sweet and savoury goodies including macarons. They have sugar free and gluten free options too. When I visited they were using Rude Health brand plant milks.

I ve been following Arapina on social media for a while and on visiting London this had to be my first port of call. On entering the small cafe it looks amazing. Very instagrammable! I was so excited to be trying the pastries and ordered the pistachio croll, almond croissant and pain au chocolate along with a matcha latte for my daughter. As a party of three we all tried a bit of each others order and all thought the same thing. Looks beautiful at a glance but on eating all the pastries were stale and a bit burnt. However, my sister enjoyed the flavour of the almond croissant but I found it too rich. The pistachio croll was rather stale and the cream inside was greasy. At £6.95 it’s rather expensive. My daughter had the matcha latte which she wasn’t sure whether they used cow’s milk or not. I don’t recall whether the serving staff had asked for preference of milk and I guess we had assumed would be made from soya. Our mistake there, so make sure to state which milk you want on ordering. She left most of the latte as she hadn’t said anything to me at the time. It’s such a shame it didn’t live up to expectations.

I have to say, I was absolutely impressed! I had been following this bakery on social media, so when I found myself in Greenwich, I knew I had to visit. And let me tell you, it did not disappoint. We tried the savoury mushroom and leek croissant (10/10), rainbow pastry (10/10), almond croissant (10/10), pistachio croll (10/10), cinnamon brioche (8/10), pear macaron (8/10), and a pumpkin pie (4/10). We will definitely be returning, especially for the croll - it was perfection!

I went to the one in Greenwich market and it had a great vegan range of foods, including some savoury crolls , mushroom sausage roll etc. I only had the cinnamon brioche and it was so good! Updated from previous review on 2023-08-13

Despite the mixed reviews, I would recommend checking out this restaurant. There is a good selection of interesting dishes that make it worth a visit if you are in the area. The coffee is good and the vegan pastries I tried were better than expected. The location is a bit odd, though. (Updated review from June 16, 2023)