Our story
Three cities,one table.
Maison Anatole began as an argument about breakfast — and became a marriage, a bakery and a small corner of Marylebone.
Elif grew up above her grandfather's fırın in Kadıköy, waking to the smell of sesame and wood smoke. Théo grew up delivering baguettes for his mother's boulangerie in the 11th arrondissement, convinced — as all Parisians are — that French butter had settled the question of pastry forever.
They met in 2009 behind the bar of a Paris café, and disagreed immediately. About lamination. About sugar. About whether coffee should be finished in three sips or last an hour. The disagreement continued through Istanbul, where Théo learned to read coffee grounds and lost the argument about baklava, and through a decade of mornings on two sides of Europe.
London settled it. A city with room for both of them — where a croissant and a simit could share a marble counter without anyone raising an eyebrow. In 2021, the shutters of 14 Chiltern Place opened for the first time. The argument, happily, continues daily. You can taste both sides of it.
The journey
Along the gold thread
Two baristas, one bar
Elif and Théo meet at Café Verlaine. He corrects her milk texture; she corrects his opinion of Turkish coffee. Neither concedes.
The apprenticeship
Two years in Kadıköy at the family fırın. Théo learns the stone oven, su böreği and patience. The cezve joins the family.
A key to Chiltern Place
A derelict Georgian corner shop in Marylebone, all peeling paint and perfect light. They sign the lease the same afternoon.
First bake
Forty croissants, sixty simit, one nervous couple. Sold out by ten. The queue has never really left.
The argument continues
Same corner, same oven, twenty-two staff, and a menu where Paris and Istanbul still politely refuse to agree.
“Butter is a language. Sesame is a language. We just refused to translate — we serve both, in the original.” — Théo Aslan-Moreau
Craftsmanship
Made in this building, every morning
Nothing on our counter travelled further than the twelve metres from oven to marble. The bake begins at 4 a.m.; the doors open at 7.30; the kitchen glass means you can watch every fold in between.
Flour from Wildfarmed. Butter from Normandy. Pistachios from Gaziantep. Sesame from the Aegean. Milk from a single Jersey herd in Somerset. We are fussy so that you don't have to be.
See what we bakeThe house
Faces behind the counter
Elif Aslan-Moreau
Founder · Head Baker
Third-generation baker from Kadıköy. Guards the simit recipe with her life and the baklava syrup ratio with slightly more.
Théo Aslan-Moreau
Founder · Head of Coffee
Paris-trained, Istanbul-humbled. Cups every roast before it reaches the hopper and still finishes his espresso in three sips.
Rosa Delacroix
Head Pâtissière
Ex-Ladurée. Responsible for the pistachio & rose cruffin, the Saturday queue, and at least one marriage proposal made over her mille-feuille.
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