London has a pudding problem at ten o'clock at night. Restaurant kitchens close, and the places still serving something sweet are not where a visitor would think to look: dessert parlours on Edgware Road and in Whitechapel, the gelato counters of Soho, and Chinatown, which stays awake longest of all. In daylight the city is far better served, and this page covers both.
Our guide to bakeries and pastries in London covers bread, croissants and the morning end of baking. This is the evening and afternoon end: ice cream, chocolate, doughnuts, patisserie and the shops worth crossing the city for. For savoury food after midnight, see late-night food in London.
One practical note first. A great many well-known London dessert shops have closed in the last few years, including some that guidebooks still list, so check that a specific address is trading before you make a journey for it.
Sweet things by hour
- Until midnight or later
- Dessert parlours on Edgware Road, in Whitechapel, Green Street, Tooting and Wembley. Alcohol-free and busy with families
- Until about 23:00
- Chinatown bubble tea shops and egg-waffle counters; Soho gelato
- Until about 22:00
- Hotel bars and the last sitting of restaurant puddings
- Daylight only
- Chocolatiers, patisseries, doughnut counters and market stalls, most of which shut by 18:00
- Ice cream
- Gelato counters in Soho and across central London; nitrogen-frozen ice cream made to order in Camden and Soho
- Hot chocolate
- Knoops sells drinking chocolate by cocoa percentage, from 28 per cent up to 100
- Avoid
- Ice cream vans parked beside major landmarks. Prices are frequently extortionate and some operate without a licence
The dessert parlours, and why nobody writes about them
The largest late-night sweet scene in London is one most visitors never encounter. Across Edgware Road, Whitechapel, Green Street, Tooting, Wembley and Southall there are cafes that open in the late afternoon and serve until midnight or beyond, selling waffles, crepes, cookie dough, milkshakes, kunafa, baklava and elaborate sundaes.
They exist because a large part of London's social life takes place without alcohol. Where other neighbourhoods have pubs, these streets have dessert cafes, and a Friday night in one is loud, family-filled and nothing like a restaurant. Our guide to halal food in London explains the wider food scene these belong to.
What to order depends on which street. The Middle Eastern end of Edgware Road does kunafa, a cheese pastry soaked in syrup, and baklava sold by weight. The parlours in east London lean towards waffles, gelato and American-style sundaes. All of them serve mint tea or Turkish coffee alongside.
Do not buy ice cream from a van parked next to a landmark. Vans working the approaches to Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and the South Bank have repeatedly been found charging several times the normal price for a soft-serve cone, and some trade without a street-trading licence or food hygiene registration. Councils and the police have seized vehicles on Westminster Bridge more than once. Walk two streets away and buy from a shop instead. Our page on common tourist scams in London covers the others.
Gelato and ice cream
Good gelato is denser and less cold than industrial ice cream, and it is served with a flat paddle rather than scooped into a ball. The signals of a serious counter are the same in London as in Italy: covered metal tins rather than mounds piled high in the display, a short list of flavours that changes, and pistachio that is brown-green rather than bright green.
Gelupo, in Archer Street in Soho, has been the benchmark in central London for years and sits opposite its own Italian delicatessen. Elsewhere in the centre you will find the Italian chains, which are competent and considerably more expensive than they need to be.
Chin Chin makes ice cream to order with liquid nitrogen: the base is mixed, frozen in front of you in about a minute in a cloud of vapour, and served immediately. It is a genuinely different texture, because the ice crystals have no time to grow, and children find the process more interesting than the result.
The traditional British contribution is the soft-serve cone with a chocolate flake pushed into it, known as a 99. Bought from a proper shop or a licensed seasonal van in a park, it is a pleasure and it is cheap. Our guides to Soho and to London with kids cover where else to find both.
Chocolate: the shops worth a detour
London's chocolate trade splits into three. There are the historic names in the arcades and department stores, several of them holding royal warrants and selling in boxes designed to be given rather than eaten. There are the modern bean-to-bar makers, who buy cocoa from named origins and print the percentage on the wrapper. And there is Dark Sugars on Brick Lane, a cocoa house with a counter of hand-rolled truffles and hot chocolate made with shavings cut from a block, which is the most enjoyable chocolate shop in the city to stand in.
Knoops, which began in Rye and has spread across London, has made a whole business out of percentage. The menu is a scale: a white chocolate at 28 per cent, milk at 34 and 43, dark at 54, 65 and 70, and extra dark running up to 100 per cent, and you pick the number as well as the drink. It is the clearest introduction to what cocoa percentage actually tastes like that exists on a high street.
For gift boxes, the food halls do the job in one stop: our guides to Fortnum & Mason and Harrods cover the two obvious ones, and both charge accordingly. Brick Lane and the surrounding markets are the opposite end; see Old Spitalfields and the Brick Lane markets.
Doughnuts, custard and the queue at Borough
The London doughnut is a yeasted, filled, sugar-rolled thing rather than a ring, and the one that started the current fashion is sold from a stall in Borough Market, where the custard goes in while you wait. Expect a queue at weekends and very little wait on a weekday morning. The same bakery runs baking classes, which is a better rainy-afternoon plan than most.
Crosstown, which began in Soho, makes sourdough doughnuts and has shops across central London. Several smaller bakeries do the same thing in Hackney, Peckham and King's Cross.
French patisserie is the other daylight option, and London has a serious version of it: eclairs made in a single narrow shop in South Kensington, and pastry counters inside the grander hotels where a single item costs what a main course does elsewhere and people queue anyway. Our guide to afternoon tea in London covers the sit-down alternative, which is the same sugar in a different form.
The cheapest good pudding in London is a market stall at four o'clock. Food market traders drop prices in the last hour rather than carry stock home, and the cake, brownie and pastry stalls are the first to discount. Our guide to London's food markets lists which markets run on which days; arrive an hour before closing rather than at lunchtime and the same item can cost half as much.
What to eat at ten at night, by area
In the West End, Soho's gelato counters and late cafes run until about eleven, and the Italian cafes on Frith Street have been serving coffee and cake late for decades.
If you are near Chinatown, the bubble tea shops, egg-waffle counters and bakeries there are open later than almost anything else in the centre, and a hot egg waffle with ice cream is a proper pudding. Our guide to Chinatown covers the streets.
Out east, the dessert parlours of Whitechapel and Green Street run past midnight. Over on the other side of town, Edgware Road does the same. And if you are staying in a hotel, the bar will usually serve a pudding after the restaurant has stopped, which is worth asking about before you go out looking.
Two cuisines covered elsewhere on this site produce desserts worth going out of your way for at any hour: the shaved-ice and purple-yam confections in our guide to Filipino food in London, and the gelato counters that tend to sit within a few doors of the pizzerias in our page on pizza in London.
Seasonal: rinks, markets and the Christmas run
From November the sweet map changes. Ice rinks bring churros and hot chocolate stands with them, and our guide to ice skating in London covers which rinks open when and how to book. Christmas markets add roasted nuts, stollen and mulled wine to the same streets.
In summer the balance tips back to ice cream, and the parks are where to eat it. Licensed vans and kiosks in the royal parks charge normal prices, unlike the ones on the bridges.
Dietary requirements
Vegan ice cream has gone from a novelty to a standard line in most gelato counters, usually made with an oat, coconut or almond base, and dark chocolate is often vegan by default, though not always; check for milk powder. See vegan and vegetarian London.
For coeliacs, chocolate and most gelato are naturally free of gluten, but the waffle, cookie and doughnut end of this category is not, and shared scoops, shared fryers and biscuit pieces in the tubs are all real risks. Ask before it is served rather than after; our page on gluten-free eating in London explains what you are entitled to be told.
Nuts are everywhere in this category: in pralines, in pistachio gelato, in baklava, in kunafa and in the toppings bins. Anyone with a serious nut allergy should treat an open dessert counter with scoops moving between tubs as high risk regardless of what the individual flavour contains.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I get dessert late at night in London?
Dessert parlours on Edgware Road and in Whitechapel, Green Street, Tooting and Wembley serve waffles, sundaes, kunafa and baklava until midnight or later. Chinatown's bubble tea and egg-waffle counters run late, and Soho's gelato shops and Italian cafes stay open to around eleven.
Is it worth buying ice cream from a van in central London?
No. Vans working the approaches to Westminster Bridge, Tower Bridge and the South Bank have repeatedly been found charging several times the normal price, and some trade without a licence or food hygiene registration; vehicles have been seized. Buy from a shop or a licensed park kiosk instead.
What is a 99 ice cream?
A soft-serve vanilla cone with a stick of flaky chocolate pushed into it. It is the traditional British seaside and park ice cream, sold from vans and kiosks, and at a licensed seller in a park it costs very little. The name's origin is disputed.
Where is the best chocolate shop in London?
It depends what you want. For hand-rolled truffles and hot chocolate shaved from a block, the cocoa house on Brick Lane. For drinking chocolate by cocoa percentage, from 28 up to 100 per cent, Knoops. For boxed gifts and royal warrants, the food halls at Fortnum & Mason and Harrods.
Where can I get good gelato in London?
Soho has the best-established counters, with Gelupo in Archer Street the long-standing benchmark. Look for covered metal tins rather than piled-up mounds, a short changing flavour list, and pistachio that is dull green rather than bright. Nitrogen-frozen ice cream made to order is a separate pleasure, found in Camden and Soho.
Sources
- Knoops - drinking chocolate by cocoa percentage (checked September 2026)
- Gelupo, Archer Street, Soho (checked September 2026)
- Dark Sugars Cocoa House, Brick Lane (checked September 2026)
- Chin Chin - nitrogen ice cream, Camden and Soho (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food hygiene ratings search (checked September 2026)
- Food Standards Agency - Food allergy and intolerance advice for consumers (checked September 2026)