Fortitude Bakehouse

Jorge Fernandez ran The Monmouth Coffee Company for six years and founded Fernandez & Wells; Dee Rettali founded Patisserie Organic in 1998. They opened this on 1 March 2018 to make cake out of sourdough, which nobody else in London was doing.

Why go

The whole bakery is built on slow-fermented dough, and the sourdough cake was the thing it opened to prove (Hot Dinners). Eight years on the counter still runs on the same logic, and the range crosses further than most: a cardamom croissant swirl and a kouign-amann sit next to a Moroccan merguez baguette with taktouka and zhoug (The Infatuation). It is a shop on a back street off Russell Square with a sliver of counter and no room to sit, and gluten-free and vegan bakes have been part of the range since day one.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the cardamom croissant swirl, a sourdough cake, the custard and strawberry morning bun, and the merguez baguette if lunch is the point. Rianne Shlebak names "the spicy merguez baguette, pizza danish, and kouign-amann filled with tangy raspberry jam" as the three that bring her back.
• Avoid: arriving after one, when the best of it has gone, and the weekend, when it does not open. Shlebak also found the beignet, for all its social-media fame, a little too cream-heavy.

What locals & experts say

• Rianne Shlebak, The Infatuation (24 July 2025), 8.3/10: "Walking through Russell Square without popping into this small takeaway bakery for a flaky sausage roll and custard and strawberry morning bun is unforgivable." Her practical note: "If you arrive after 1pm you might miss out on some of these excellent baked goods." ref
• Nancy Smallwood, Hot Dinners (February 2018), reporting the opening and what it was for: "Their unusual cake will be made from sourdough, and yes, there'll be gluten and vegan bakes too." ref
• Harden's logged the opening, noting it would be the first in London to offer sourdough cakes, and its diners' survey has never gathered enough feedback to write the place up. That absence is worth stating rather than papering over. ref

Good to know

• Where: 35 Colonnade WC1N 1JA, a back street a block from Russell Square station.
• Timing: 7.30am to 3.30pm Monday to Friday, closed at weekends. Get there before one.
• Format: takeaway, with a sliver of counter to stand at.
• Diet: gluten-free and vegan bakes have been part of the range since it opened. Nothing about cross-contamination is published, so this is stated as an offer rather than as a safety claim.
• Hygiene: the food-hygiene register holds the premises as Fortitude Bakery with a rating of 3, inspected 12 September 2023. The three components are hygiene 5, structure 10, confidence in management 10, so food practice is the strongest of the three and the building is the weakest. The inspection is nearly three years old, which is part of the picture. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Nothing. His saved-places export carries an empty Note for this row, checked against london/data/_src-part3.csv. The master CSV's "Small-batch bakes; buns worth the queue" line came from an enrichment pass. The queue is real and the reason is the fermentation, which is a stronger claim and is sourced above.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth going out of your way for, and going early. Jorge Fernandez ran Monmouth Coffee for six years before founding Fernandez & Wells; Dee Rettali founded Patisserie Organic in 1998. They opened this on 1 March 2018 around one idea, slow-fermented dough, and the proposition nobody else in London was making at the time was cake built on sourdough. Eight years on, The Infatuation's Rianne Shlebak scores it 8.3 and says walking past without stopping is unforgivable, which is a specific instruction rather than a compliment. The craft axis here is depth rather than change: a long fermentation programme, the same technique held for years, and a counter that runs from cardamom croissant swirls to a Moroccan merguez baguette with taktouka and zhoug. It holds below the top rung because it is a takeaway counter with almost nowhere to sit, open weekdays only, and the good things are gone by one.