Leave it to the pros this Pancake Day: head to Sugar and Lemon

Sugar and Lemon is a little crêperie in Tooting Market that opened in 2022. It’s recently changed up its decor from a quaint, French style to a much more striking neon-signed getup. It suits the place, and the Market, very well and it’s hard to miss it walking by.

Which is good news, because you certainly won’t want to miss it. Especially now Pancake Day is creeping up on the horizon. The menu is surprisingly extensive for somewhere that ‘just’ does crêpes. They’ve got all the sweet flavours you can conjure up (Nutella, sugar and lemon, jam, biscoff, fruity numbers…), inventive savoury options (chicken and cheese salad, a tuna and sweet chilli melty number, goats cheese and roasted vegetables…) plus, more recently, their bubble waffles too.

We had a sweet tooth tonight so went for a Nutella, Oreo, banana and strawberry crêpe and, of course, a classic sugar and lemon. The first was properly delicious. It came elaborately decorated with drizzles of chocolate and blobs of cream on top and was filled to bursting. All the different textures and flavours wrapped up in a thin crêpe was stuff of our childhood dreams and you can’t help but eat this one with a big grin on your face.

They say you can judge a place by the simplest thing on the menu and in this case there was even more weight riding on the lemon and sugar crêpe; the whole restaurant is named after it. So we were expecting something pretty special and that’s exactly what we got. Again, it was plated beautifully and the simple ingredients were elevated nicely with a bit of blowtorching on the outside which gave the sugar a caramelised flavour and the whole thing a crunchier, brûlée texture. Certainly not something we’d have managed at home.

For a mid-week market restaurant visit we were impressed to see how packed it was with customers, and it seems that the word is slowly but surely getting out about this Tooting gem. Aside from those fantastic pancakes it’s got a lovely atmosphere about it and it really is worth the trip. When all the eggs in the shops have, inevitably, sold out and your homemade batter has split you know where to go. We will see you there.