London's Best Food Tours

Tea, Tower Bridge and a Ghost or Two: London Doughnut Tours on Both Sides of the River

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South of the river

Our Borough Market walking tour begins at St John Bakery on Borough High Street, and honestly, there are worse ways to start a morning in London. Then you're into Borough Market itself, all clatter and queues, for a doughnut from one of its bakery counters. Your guide will stop you at Southwark Cathedral, at the replica of Drake's Golden Hinde sitting in its little dock, and outside the old coaching inns where travellers once rested before crossing London Bridge.

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Santa Nata hands over a warm pastel de nata. Cinnamon Tree Bakery has a chunky Jammie Dodger biscuit with your name on it. Bird & Blend pours a tea tasting, because this is London and we'd be letting the side down otherwise. Then the streets open up onto the Thames, and there's Tower Bridge.

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Seven Dials to Chinatown

The West End food tour starts at Bird & Blend on Monmouth Street in Seven Dials, so the tea comes first this time. From there it's through Neal's Yard (another St John doughnut), into Covent Garden for a bun at Buns From Home and a chocolate swirl at Donutelier, and down Maiden Lane, where your guide has a few theatre stories ready. Chinatown Bakery serves a custard waffle fish, which looks exactly like it sounds. Filled Italian doughnuts at Bombolone finish things off.

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After dark, our haunted doughnut tour takes the same corner of theatreland and turns the lights down: sweet snacks, old playhouses and the spirits said to have never left them. At Christmas the Southwark route gets a Dickens twist, with each stop standing in for Christmas past, present or yet to come.

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Six ways to walk it

• Borough Market & Tower Bridge Doughnut Tour: the full walk, treats and tea included, ending by the river.

• Borough Market Choose Your Own Sweet Treats & Tea: the same streets and stories, and you pick and buy your own treats as you go.

• Covent Garden & West End Doughnut Tour: Seven Dials, Covent Garden and Chinatown, all included.

• Covent Garden Choose Your Own Sweet Treats & Tea: the West End route with free rein at every counter.

• Borough Market Holiday Doughnut Tour: the Dickensian Christmas version of the Southwark walk.

• Haunted Theatreland Doughnuts & Sweet Treats Tour: ghost stories and sugar in the West End once the sun's gone.