Scones and London’s Savoy hotel have been synonymous since the hotel opened, 136 years ago, and began to serve afternoon tea in its elegant Thames Foyer.
The Savoy opted for a facelift last year and has made some changes, most notably by opening Scoff, a stand-alone offering take-out fresh scones to the masses. (Note that the received English pronunciation of “scone” is to rhyme it with “gone.”)
Daringly, the decision was made to re-interpret the scone, and racy, reimagined haute scones are now revealed at exactly 12:04 p.m. every day—the peculiarly precise time being a witty reference to afternoon tea usually being served at 4 p.m. There are five variations of scone available at any one time, and Scoff’s current flavors include exotic mango, coconut and chocolate, and toffee and popcorn, with each scone costing $10.40 each.
“We realized London is enjoying a ‘sconaissance’ that is reverberating globally,” explains the Savoy’s executive pastry chef, Nicolas Houchet, who points to the burgeoning popularity of scone-making, and scone-eating, videos on TikTok under the hashtag #sconetok. “My challenge, as a classically trained French chef, is that scones are not in my DNA. So I decided to incorporate the French-pâtisserie techniques I am so well versed in to redefine the scone with a nod to classic desserts.”
Visually, Scoff’s scones are more like fine millinery than they are traditional scones, with sophisticated and delicate glazes around the bases (made with clarified butter and buttermilk for lightness), creams, and tuiles. They’re exquisitely presented in beribboned pink boxes, and the repertoire will change seasonally, with Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day scones in the works.
After a tasting, the refined take on tiramisu was my favorite. The best-seller is strawberry and cream, a nod to traditional scone presentations.
In Notting Hill, queues of millennial tourists can be found outside Cheeky Scone, the self-proclaimed “first scone shop in the UK,” which lives up to its name with its irreverent, sometimes bonkers creativity. The scones are squat and large and have novel toppings with TikTok appeal—Biscoff white chocolate and Nutella swirl, anyone?
“My challenge, as a classically trained French chef, is that scones are not in my DNA.”
Scones are not reserved solely for tea. British chefs are bringing them to the dinner table, too. Paul Ainsworth, the chef at No6 in the Cornish town of Padstow, says his scone “snack” brings a sense of place to dinner. It’s made with five-year-aged Davidstow cheddar and served with homemade cultured butter, malt-vinegar powder, Cornish sea salt, and nori seaweed, with a chickpea-and-eggplant crema.
Stephen Cottage, better known as “the SconeMan,” is the proprietor of London’s first micro-sconery, in South London. He provides scones to, among others, Pierre Gagnaire’s Sketch, in London’s Mayfair, where traditional scones are served warm, wrapped in linen napkins with strawberry-and-poppy-seed jam and clotted cream.
Cottage started modestly, producing a couple of dozen scones for cafés in Chelsea, but he is about to launch in-person scone-making lessons at his sconery, complete with a champagne cream tea, not to mention a series of “scones and sonatas” salon recitals starting in September.
The sconaissance is not limited to the United Kingdom. In Paris, the Bristol and Crillon hotels have embraced afternoon cream teas with scones, although most food fashionistas are heading to Recto Verso, a bookshop-café in Le Marais, for their fluffy-scone fix.
In New York, the salty-sweet buttermilk scones—made fresh on the hour—at Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop, in the heart of the East Village, have inspired thousands of TikTok appreciations and have heightened demand for the British style of softer, lighter scones. While at the Sconery in Queens, which also sells at farmers markets in New York City and Westchester, sconnoisseurs eulogize about the crunchy, salty crusts.
Even in Japan, home of the tea ceremony, British afternoon teas and scones have made inroads. Tearoom Kiku is an homage to the quintessentially British tradition, with huge canisters of fresh leaf tea, English china, and impeccable scones. The age-old debate over whether to put the jam on your scone before the cream, or vice versa, continues here, too, although with yuzu jam replacing the more traditional strawberry.
Sudi Pigott is a London-based food-and-travel writer and author
