Pancakes are definitely one of my favourite foods, so on one of my most recent trips to London, I decided I finally had to try some Japanese soufflé pancakes. The soufflé pancake style originally emerged and grew popular within Japan’s domestic café culture, heavily concentrated in cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Cafés like Gram Cafe & Pancakes and A Happy Pancake popularised the signature 'jiggly,' towering look. However, the pancakes quickly made their way over to the UK and the soufflé pancake trend went fully viral on platforms like Instagram and TikTok from around 2018.
Brands like Fuwa Fuwa (founded in Toronto in 2018) and C A Japanese Pancakes (discovered by London founders in 2019) brought the concept to Western markets. Food bloggers and travellers flooded social media with slow-motion videos of the pancakes bouncing, turning them into an overnight internet obsession.
Considering I moved out of London in 2019, then the pandemic happened, then I had a baby, I had seen the pancakes online but never actually tried them in real life. However, I decided to change all that on my recent London trip and headed down to Fuwa Fuwa in Soho.
I had read online that the cafe often has lines to get into it and you can 'expect a minimum wait time of 15 to 30 minutes' for food. This led to mistakenly joining a queue to the wrong place, which I thought was Fuwa Fuwa. But I soon realised I was instead being ushered into popular new bakery Onsu, and made my departure.
I found Fuwa Fuwa just down the road and I have to admit that my first thought was that the place could do with a bit of a clean-up outside. The paintwork definitely wasn't looking fresh, let me put it that way.
Unlike Onsu – which is currently popular amongst foodies – there was also no queue, which I thought was a bit odd considering it was Saturday morning in central London. There was just one person in front of me and after they were served, it was my turn. I told the server that I was debating between the Strawberry Fluffcake (strawberry sauce, vanilla cream, fresh strawberries, and toasted almonds) pancakes and the Blueberry and Yuzu Cheesecake pancakes, which are topped with deconstructed yuzu cream cheese, blueberry compote, and biscuit crumb. He said the Blueberry and Yuzu Cheesecake pancakes were the more popular choice out of those two so I decided to go with those.
I paid £11.90 for those, which as you probably can agree is a lot for pancakes. However, I really did want to give them a try. There was a free table and seat available so I sat down at that, expecting a bit of a wait for the pancakes, however I was surprised that I was called back to the counter to get my order pretty much straight away.
The pancakes certainly looked like they do online and they were as fluffy as you expect, but I can't say the taste blew me away that much. As in I probably would say I've had tastier pancakes myself at home. You can help but feel a bad taste in your mouth from the price too, despite the food being tasty. I know it's central London but nearly £12 on pancakes is a bit much, even for a foodie like me.
It was definitely fun getting the pancakes once and I can see why you would get them if you were visiting London and don't have anything similar near you, but I can't say that the place is going to be a London foodie go-to of mine when I visit. Judging by the lack of queue, it seems like many agree with me too now that social buzz bubble has burst.
