TOAD Bakery

TOAD started as Frog Bakery in 2021, a pop-up before it had a shop. It became TOAD after chef Adam Handling's restaurant The Frog sent a trademark cease-and-desist — a small legal footnote that says something real about how fast this place grew. By 2025 it had won Bakery of the Year at the National Bakery Awards and landed in The Good Food Guide's UK top 50.

The shop itself is tiny: a counter opposite Camberwell College of Arts, no espresso machine, drip coffee only, and a queue that SLOP Magazine clocked as a fair trade for "serious baking that never forgets that, at the end of the day, it is meant to be delicious." The everything-bagel croissant and saffron-and-vanilla teacake are the two most-ordered items on Google's own menu data, and The Nudge rates the savoury pastries as highly as the sweet ones — unusual for a bakery this size.

Budget-wise, this is cheap: a bakery counter, not a destination splurge. Google's own pricing data bands a visit at £1-10 per person, and Time Out puts a single croissant close to £5 — well under what a sit-down breakfast costs nearby.

Not every account is a rave. A r/LondonFood thread from one visitor who queued half an hour found the yuzu Jaffa cake's topping "super gelatinous and unpleasant" and the chocolatine "underbaked... pretty much raw in the middle." That's one visit against 844 Google reviews averaging 4.8, most of them recent and specific about the same pastries landing well — worth knowing going in that a queue this long doesn't guarantee a perfect box every time.

TOAD outgrew Camberwell: a second, considerably larger site opened in Deptford's St Paul's House on 8 July 2026, built with an open-plan kitchen partly to supply both shops and to train new bakers. Camberwell stays the original counter; go there for the queue and the story, Deptford if you want the same bakes without the wait.

For another market stop worth timing around, see Borough Market, a short ride north across the river.