Hummingbird Bakery
47 Old Brompton Road
SW7 3JP
Date of Last Visit: Saturday, March 22 2008
The Victims: Sarah, Rachel, Arielle
The Background: When we arrive at Hummingbird, the queue is out the door. But we manage a table anyhow and Sarah lines up for some cupcakes. The place is manic. People are in and out and in and out. While we’re waiting, someone uses the loo and accidentally pulls the emergency cord, so for the next five minutes, this ear-piercing tone can be heard throughout Hummingbird. The staff must be immune to this, because they ignore it. This is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever experienced.
We quickly eat what we can of our cupcakes–I’ve had so much sugar, I feel sick and the high pitched continuous tone is not helping–and we leave.
The Verdict: Not a place to hang out. But I thought the carrot cake cupcake was the strongest cupcake I’d had all day. The cream cheese frosting was great. And the carrot cake was rich and dense and had all sorts of interesting things in it. All that being said, there are a lot of signs in the loo telling you NOT to do things, and this sorta bothers me. (“Please don’t pull the emergency cord” was one of them.) I can understand why they need all those signs, but they seem slightly passive aggressive to me. I wish I had taken a photo.
