15 hours ago
Would you spend £6 on a croissant? (Gen Z does)
Gen Z: Fancy a croissant for breakfast?
Boomer: Go on, then. There's a Tesco Finest pack in the bread bin.
Be real. I'm nipping to Baaria on Charing Cross Road to buy them fresh.
Nipping? It's a 15km round trip.
I'll run there, grab two of the £5.45 pistachio croissants and be back in no time.
Are they made by a Michelin-starred chef?
Baaria was recommended by influencer Emma Pudge in one of her 'Bun Run' series.
To me, 'Bun Run' means nipping to the corner shop in my dressing gown.
It's where Pudge shares a running route with her 23,000 Instagram followers, which ends at a specific must-try bakery.
Does jogging 100 yards down the road and getting a Greggs jam doughnut count?
Greggs? Please! That's for Boomers and builders.
I'm not sure someone with 'digital vibe curator' on their CV is qualified to make vocation-based judgments.
I've told you, a brand's social-media aura matters. Anyway, even The Telegraph says hipster bakeries are the new Gen Z hotspots.
Where you eat your pastry barefoot in a shared community space while a man with a nose ring plays the bongos?
[Eyeroll] The coolest ones are on The Good Food Guide's list of Britain's 50 best bakeries, which has become a bible for pastry lovers.
All 50 must be in East London – the only place pretentious enough for someone to spend a tenner on an 'artisan' eclair.
They're actually as far flung as Glasgow. The Guardian says it's creating a whole new travel trend called 'bakery tourism'.
In my day, bakery tourism meant strolling down the bread aisle in the Co-op.
One Gen Zer told the paper he'd completed a 14-day trek and two ferry hops to reach The Bakehouse in remote Mallaig on the west coast of Scotland.
What's on the menu: a cream slice infused with haggis and Irn-Bru?
That's actually xenophobic. The fishing village is famous for its hazelnut praline pain suisse.
Sounds weirdly French. Anyway, what happened to your generation being skint?
According to trade mag British Baker, 80 per cent of us Gen Zers believe a daily sweet treat is important for mental health.
More essential than, say, a roof over their heads or a healthy savings account?
'I am held hostage by my need for a daily sweet treat,' one wrote on X. Another said: 'A mid-afternoon sweet treat might actually save my life.'
So now we're supposed to be prescribing viennoiseries to you lot on the NHS?
It's called self-care. You wouldn't get it.
It's exactly how I feel about my 4pm Hobnob and cuppa. It just doesn't cost £8 or require a ten-mile trek across London.
Bloomsbury's Fortitude Bakehouse is only down the road, with its delish £4.50 pistachio choux buns.
Apparently, there's a 90-minute queue outside after Parkrun on Saturday morning.
It's very popular with tourists.
It's a cult with icing sugar! A cake and a latte there costs nearly a tenner.
It's even pricier if you drink oat milk.
What's the point of ordering oat milk when the pastries have enough dairy to milk an entire farm dry?
It's eco-friendly, duh.
Just like the fuel burned during that 180-mile pilgrimage to the bakery in outer Scotland.
Influencer Toby Inskip, better known as Eating With Tod, told his 1.9 million Instagram followers Fortitude's £4.50 nutty crème bun has 'custody of my soul'.
Sounds nutty himself. Either that or the bakery has paid him.
He'd have to tag his post as an ad.
