Chatsworth Bakehouse is a diminutive hub of focaccia-based creativity, almost unassuming, but online it is a giant. The shop operates a weekly changing menu, serving sandwiches between Wednesdays and Fridays, and each Monday, as soon as a new £10 creation is announced on Instagram, the bakery sells out in under a minute — more than 200 every day. Competition is fierce: people have been known to set alarms, taken days off work, and travel for hundreds of miles to get to the front of the queue. The hype began in 2020 when Croydon-born founders Tom Mathews and Sian Evans were left twiddling their thumbs in the belligerent humdrum of lockdown. Mathews, a chef at a loose end, and Evans, in the music industry and working remotely with much less to do, opened a small venture and started baking bread and crafting inventive fillings. Today, they’ve expanded to a second site, serving pizzas, pastries, breads and those prized sandwiches that cause such commotion. The latest is in homage to Crystal Palace star Ebere Eze and is made with prosciutto cotto, marinated mozzarella, spring pea and wild garlic pesto, potato aioli, chilli pickled onions and Italian rocket. Heaven.
