In the past year the bread maker Warburtons has shifted approximately 720 million crumpets in the UK. Let that sink in. That’s 10.5 crumpets per person, which goes a long way to explain why they are popping up on menus across the country. Not just simply toasted and slathered in butter, but in new surprising forms such as ice cream and croutons.
This summer, when the handbag designer Anya Hindmarch opened her concept shop the Ice Cream Project, she raided British store cupboards in search of flavour inspiration. She made a Kellogg’s Coco Pops flavour a McVitie’s Digestives flavour and — among her most popular — a Warburtons Crumpet flavour. “I just want to make the everyday extraordinary,” she said.
Most recently at Dovetale, Tom Sellers’s new restaurant at the luxury 1 Hotel Mayfair, London (rooms start from £500 a night), mini crumpets are served on a silver bowl with crabs and as an alternative to blinis — the perfect high-low combination.
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My favourite new reinvention of crumpets, however, is from the food writer Ixta Belfrage, who includes a recipe for crumpet croutons in her book Mezcla: Recipes to Excite. Once baked with oil, they turn golden brown and, thanks to their crispy holes, are even crunchier than traditional croutons. Served with a tomato and tahini salad, as they are in her book, these holes also fill up with dressing.
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The obsession with gourmet crumpets began in 2018 when the chef Tom Brown opened Cornerstone. The seafood restaurant, which has a Michelin star, is in a far corner of east London called Hackney Wick, but when it opened nobody ventured there for a fancy dinner. Except for crumpet fans, who travelled across the city just for Brown’s, which came topped with potted shrimp. That same year, Yotam Ottolenghi experienced a crumpet craze when he opened the doors of Rovi in central London. The most sought-after dish? The lobster crumpet.
Then lockdown happened and crumpets were once again comfort food that were brought out with cups of tea after cold, lonely walks and in between Zoom calls. The closest they got to fish was a stockpiled tin of tuna.
But as the country reopened, chefs’ imaginations began whirring again. Katrina Ajomale, 33, is the brains behind Crumpetorium in Norwich, an “experimental” crumpet shop that handmakes flavoured crumpets and delivers them nationwide (£6.60 for a packet of six). Purists look away now — flavours include cheese, chocolate chip and ginger. I was sceptical at first but, having tried the chocolate and cheese flavours (just one of each — these are huge), I am converted. The former is best treated like a pancake, and served with sugar and lemon or chocolate sauce. The latter goes perfectly with Marmite for a double savoury hit.
For those less willing to push the boundaries of what should and should not go on top of a crumpet, look to The Little Chartroom in Edinburgh, where they are topped with Baron Bigod cheese, butter, sour cherry and truffle honey, or Ploussard, a wine bar in southwest London most famous not for its glasses of pét nat sparkling wine, but its lamb and anchovy crumpets.
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Diehard fans will know that the best you can buy are not from Mr Warburton but from a tiny London-based producer called Jones’ Crumpets — you can get them in posh delis in packs of five or order online (£25 for a box of 20).
These are the size of small dinner plates and thick with wonky, deep holes that collect reservoirs of melted butter. Getting your hands on a pack of Jones’ Crumpets at my local farmers’ market is like trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets. They sell like hot cakes.
When I have secured a pack, I’ve had them at home for brunch with wild mushrooms or avocado and a poached egg, but not all the time. Sometimes there are crumpets that are just too good to have with anything other than a thick layer of butter and a cup of tea.
