SODA Studio channels the sweetness of rhubarb for Humble Crumble's Camden outpost

A shop selling crumble – that old-school British comfort food – has opened in North London’s Camden Market. Humble Crumble is designed by Soho-based SODA Studio, combining rough-and-ready elements with the millennial favourite, pastel pink, across the 41-sqm, double-aspect corner space.

SODA’s senior interior designer, Charlotte Conroy, stripped out all the mechanical kit from the site’s previous life as a souvlaki grill. ‘We then went on to spray the ceilings, add a new and compact back of house area, stain the original heritage timber floors and install the new open bakery concept,’ she explains.

There are exposed brick walls, services running across the ceiling, and a revealed back-of-house kitchen full of industrial-looking stainless steel equipment to channel Camden’s hard-edged aesthetic.

Meanwhile, the pudding’s cosy connotations (school dinners, Sunday lunch at grandma’s) are expressed in the curved bar, which is on show through the big arched window. The bar is made of a textured, pulled render, topped by a pink pigmented concrete worktop courtesy of Dorset’s Morris Concrete Designs. The colour used is a bespoke shade of pastel pink – less brash than Barbie’s house in the eponymous 2023 film and less overt than Mexican architect Luis Barragán’s ‘modernism pink’. The storage units are white, and the shelving is dark pink.

Camden is the second site for Humble Crumble, which bills itself as the world’s first crumble bar. Its original outpost, in East London’s Spitalfields, is also by SODA and opened last year following the brand’s success with a market stall at Borough Market – it became a viral hit on social media with its ‘specials’ topped with eye-catching delights such as fluffy ice-cream.