The Toast Rack Bake House — Restaurant in London

We're not happy to be writing this review; unfortunately, we've had a bad experience and feel that the response to a serious health and safety breach fell very below basic professional standards. We were also then billed for the wrong customer's food.

We went to the Toast Rack on Sunday 1 September 2024. We ordered one latte, one cappucino and two English breakfasts.

We discovered a large ceramic chip inside the cappucino that we ordered, originating from the cup itself which was broken. The chip was large enough to present a serious choking hazard, and easily could have been swallowed. They then offered a fresh cup to compensate, which we didn't consume as we felt concerned after discovering the first one.

While issues are unavoidable in any restaurant, what made things worse was that the manager was (1) 'too busy' to come and give a formal apology or offer to report the incident. (2) The waiting staff then quickly hoovered up the cup and we ended up having to request it back to take our own record, the staff losing the chip in the process. The restaurant did offer to email us a record of the incident, and we'll update the review to say when we've received it.

To add insult to injury, (3) we were billed for the wrong customer's food (under invoice number 47023), which we only discovered when getting home. This leaves us without any formal receipt of what we paid for in this case.

We weren't expecting compensation for what we found; instead, simply a professional response to a health and safety incident, and confidence that this would be dealt with properly. We didn't receive that.

We're not sure if this is something we should report to the FSA as this is something that could have killed a customer under the wrong circumstances. For now, I am leaving this review and hope that the restaurant can act on it in a way it should have done in the...

Update: I just visited four months after leaving the area and nothing's changed - Monica and Maddie were delighted to see me, remembered my favourite orders, and the food was just as fantastic as before. Thank you for being such delightful human beings.

What a wonderful place to go! I've lived in the area for almost a year and there's no better place to grab and coffee and be treated like a welcome local.

The front of house is a deli-café, with the deli offering freshly-baked bread, a wide variety of fruit, veg and meat, premium cooking sauces, beers and wines and plenty more. The café has coffee (obviously), teas and a fantastic selection of baked goods, a lot of which are vegetarian/vegan and/or gluten-free. There's a cutesy decking out front with chairs and tables (which TFL are trying, unjustly, to get removed!), which is perfect to cotch at all year round.

At the back of house is a restaurant which I haven't sampled much but what I have ordered has been delivered promptly and tasted pretty damn good.

But the real reason Toast Rack is so close to my heart: the staff aren't robotic, "I want to get out of here" servers, they're passionate, wonderful human beings who deserve recognition for making the place run smoothly and putting smiles on countless faces. I'm still learning everyone's names, but Monica, Maddie and Natasha have all stood out to me as some of the kindest, honest, hardworking people - not just in retail/coffee shops, but in general - I've had the...

Quite a disappointing trip. Stopped in for lunch whilst working nearby, for a ‘quick bite’. The server ensured he would come to take my order in a couple of minutes, waited at least 15 minutes (the place wasn’t that busy) and had to walk inside to remind them. When it came to ordering, the brunch selection was fairly limited - the server seemed fairly confused about me wanting to add avocado and an additional egg to eggs on toast (a staple gen Z diet?! No?) - weirdly insisting they ‘were extras’ and when the food came out, they were just quite unnecessarily in separate dishes. The meal I ordered came in a decent time and was tasty (and is the only reason for the 2 stars) however I had finished that and the coffee and cake I had ordered at the same time, still hadn’t arrived. Had to go inside and remind them, got asked ‘what coffee did I order’ again. When the coffee came out it was 3.70 + service charge for a very small oat latte and the banana bread was very stale. Waited a while after as I was told I would order and pay at table, no one came out so went up to pay for what was a very overpriced unpleasant eat-in and service.

Don’t normally write reviews… but all in alla bad spot for lunch and won’t be going again! The servers themselves at first seemed lovely, but they were managing the operations...