Good morning and welcome back to the** Vittles podcast! **You can listen to our back catalogue of episodes with the likes of Super 8’s Songsoo Kim, Chishuru’s Joké Bakare, Ferhat Dirik of Mangal 2, PR veteran Gemma Bell, Ruby Tandoh, Stephen Buryani and more. If you prefer to watch your podcasts, you can now do so on our YouTube channel!
Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is an interview with baker and pastry chef Anna Higham, the owner of the lauded Quince Bakery and Clementine, a café opening soon in Islington.
Higham’s story is as rich and varied as her bakes. Her career spans some of the world’s most famous kitchens, beginning with the Gordon Ramsay Group in London. After moving to New York, she spent time at the legendary Gramercy Tavern. While in the city, the mentorship of Claudia Fleming would prove formative for Higham, and when she returned to London in the late 2010s she brought with her a focus on provenance and seasonality.
Higham’s name quickly became known to pastry aficionados in the capital via her work at the landmark new-wave Modern British restaurant Lyle’s. While the pastry section broadly subscribed to the sometimes sparse aesthetic and precision preferred by Lyle’s head chef James Lowe – she shared his obsession with hyper-seasonality, British fruit and heritage grains – her desserts were subtly different. Higham would ensure her creations were generous and delicious, with less voguish fixation on oats, fruit and yoghurt than her colleagues had, whose desserts could sometimes pass for breakfast bowls. Instead, there were cakes, cream, meringues, caramels – as well as an abundance of berries.
During our conversation, Higham discusses what drove that approach, who shaped it, and how she gained the confidence to finally go it alone. Following the immense success of Quince and ahead of the opening of Clementine next month, she also shares her view on the ‘hype’ bakery scene in London – and her venue’s own place within it.
We hope you enjoy the episode. Let us know what you think in the comments!
The Vittles Podcasts is free for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. We’d be very grateful if you can like, share and rate wherever you get your podcasts – it all helps us continue to put it out for free. A massive thanks to Lucy Dearlove, our producer, and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.
A reminder that all of our most recent episodes – with ▶Shuko Oda, ▶Ziad Halub and Farsin Rabiee, ▶Will Gleave, and ▶Stephen Buranyi – are available to ▶watch on YouTube. Huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter for their work on those.
Thank you for listening, reading, watching and supporting our work.
Coming up…
In the coming weeks, we’ll have interviews with Viewpoint’s Hussein Ahmad, the only London restaurant accountant you might already have heard of; Michelle Salazar de la Rocha and Sam Napier on why they’re closing Sonora, one of the most popular taquerias in London; and Luca’s Dan Willis and Johnny Smith on life before, during and after The Clove Club.
The
Vittlespodcast is hosted byVittlesrestaurants editor.[Adam Coghlan]
Anna Highamis a baker and pastry chef. She owns Quince Bakery and Clementine, a neighbourhood café in London. She is the author ofThe Last Bite: A Whole New Approach to Making Desserts Through the Year.
Lucy Dearloveis an audio producer, sound designer and writer originally from North East England, now based in St Leonards-on-Sea. Her food podcast,, is a two-time winner of the Fortnum & Mason Podcast of the Year Award.[Lecker]The full
masthead can be foundVittles[here].
