East London’s Pioneering South Asian Restaurateurs Announce New Bakery

Harneet and Devina Baweja, the restaurateurs behind Gunpowder, Madame D, and Gul & Sepoy, have announced the upcoming opening of their first “bakery and wine bar”, which will be called Custard.

Inspired by the coffee houses of Kolkata, Custard is set to open in the new One Tower Bridge development in late July, preceding by a month the opening of another Gunpowder restaurant in the same development, as announced last year.

Speaking of the opening of Custard, Harneet said:

I’ve been aching to launch a bakery for so long. In today’s fast-paced society, we’ve completely lost the art of sitting down together and enjoying each other’s company over something simple but delicious to eat and drink. I aim to bring that back. We’ve got a great location at Tower Bridge and I want to recreate the relaxed atmosphere of the old coffee houses of Kolkata.

In practice, that will see Custard open daily from 8am-11pm, serving breakfast and lunch and a range of pre- and post-theatre snacks targeted to patrons of the nearby Bridge Theatre (where St. John currently has a restaurant concession.) Dishes like butter chicken puffs or mutton and egg sandwiches are expected to feature alongside Goan pork sausage rolls, while sweets will include sour Narangi custard tart with pistachio meringue and almond and cherry ghee cake, as well as a “soft serve custard” that reads like a signature in the making. Coffee will be from Old Street-based Ozone Coffee Roasters.

There is little information as to the specifics of the “wine bar” side to Custard, though it seems logical that a focus on snacks and a casual bar-like environment may be aimed at preventing it from cannibalising the dinner trade at Gunpowder, which will open upstairs from Custard in August.

Custard will be the fourth restaurant from Harneet and Devina Baweja, who launched Gunpowder in Shoreditch in 2015, before following it up with Madame D and Gul & Sepoy in 2017.