Kastner and Ovens

Walked past 12 cafes for this place. Very glad we did. Great service, coffee, hot chocolates and superb Raspberry slice.

The best place for a quick delicious lunch. Pies and salads are great! Service is cool!

The best place ever for lunch and cakes. Amazing selections of salads that changes everyday. They do amazing potatoes with different flavours. The peas and roast mushrooms are also great. I’ve tried the brownies, cookies and curly whirly cake — all amazing.

LOVE this place. It is a bit of a walk from my office but fortunately they put up the menu on their Facebook page in the morning so I can see if it’s worth making the trip. Food always tastes fresh and there is a great selection.
The soy samlon and lentil lunchbox is a particular favourite, great value and you get a whole salmon fillet unlike most lunch places.

Great selection of freshly baked cakes, treats, mix and match fresh salads, hot savoury food and soups. This is a great go-​to lunch place for take away healthy food around Covent Garden. The salads are not your average Caesar or Greek salad — great combinations and lots of colours. There are only two tables inside to eat on location so be prepared for lines with the food and takeout.

This place is a great lunch find for anyone looking for fresh food with that homecooked feeling. Think ‘healthy’ sans the boring chow like sprouting beans.
My new motto for healthy eating in 2012 is ‘What would Ger Murphy do?’. My Dad swears by homecooked meals (which you can get close to in Irish pubs) and doesn’t seem to have put on a pound since his twenties. Kastner and Ovens seems like a London fix that fits that description perfectly — and no-​one goes home hungry.
As emphasised below, in winter it’s more suitable to those with an office nearby because there’s nowhere to sit. Besides that, I have no complaints and it’s a favourite amongst my co-​workers. Add to that some delightful and ever-​helpful staff and you have a winning combination.
Saying that — I’m a little afraid because I haven’t even tried their cake selection yet and by the sounds of it, they’ll never be able to get rid of me once I do!

So if you’re like me and work in central London and hate having the same packaged sandwiches for lunch but just don’t have the time to bring in leftovers or better yet, make a home-​cooked lunch to bring into work: you will love Kastner & Ovens! I was introduced by a colleague when the smell of her lasagna made me think of home. In fact, everything on the menu screams «freshly baked». The other reviews are right — the queue can get very long at peak times during lunch. But if you plan it right, you can have yourself a home-​cooked meal, complete with a piece of cake, in no time. The trick is to make your desk feel more like home once you get back to eat it.

The place was very busy, but hey – it was lunch time.
It’s a small room and was kind of confusing and chaotic because there were just a bunch of people standing around in no particular order: a clump on the left, looking at all the food, picking things they wanted, and a clump on the right, trying to pay. Despite this, however, they moved people through quickly and did it with smiles.
Very good quiche. I ate on the steps of Covent Garden and people watched.

Oh dear, I’ve just bought three brownies.

Fooooooood! The people here clearly love their food. Kastner & Ovens is an amalgamation of everything that is good and wholesome on Gods green earth: vegetarian delights, curries, pies and cake, so much amazing cake I can barely contain myself.
I had myself a meal of pie that was suffused with soft cheese, sage and chicken; lentils with beetroot, and stunning dauphinoise potatoes. It was excellent, filling and worth the slightly inflated price.
Eating in can be a chore as there is only one table at the back of the store, yet saying this, on a Monday lunch time, the three of us who went all snaffled seats.
My recommendation: Go for the mango and orange cheesecake — OH MY GOD!

Today a lemon bar from Kastner & Ovens changed my life.
I don’t even like lemon bars. But this wasn’t your ordinary gooey mess on crumbly crust, this was a slightly hardened powered sugar top, fresh lemony goodness middle, all resting on a soft, moist, perfectly textured shortbread base that was better than anything, and I mean anything that I have ever put my mouth around.
These lemon bars are too good for any low level sex metaphor, so let’s just say this: I would get paid in these lemon bars if I could.

Lovely secret place for delicious and healthy takeaway lunches.

a new lunch favorite of mine. they make outstanding quiche and a nice slice is only £2.50.
all their baked goods look amazing too. if i wanted to gain a bunch of weight this is the place i would indulge at.

Thank God for this place. Ever since my office moved to Covent Garden from Soho, there’s been a dearth of good takeaway places for lunch. This one more than makes up for it. They offer a good selection of salads, hot dishes, soups etc. I quite like the different salads you can mix up in a box in two different portion sizes. Service can be a bit chaotic as everything is portioned to order and the shop is quite small. Get there early if you can and avoid the crowd.
Very reasonably priced. Although not quite at the quality or interest level of Ottolenghi, it’s also about substantially less expensive.

Excellent food, good service, reasonably priced. Go early for lunch as there might be a queue — but if there is it doesn’t take long. This place is only take away. There is a couple of hot dishes and several different salads you can choose from. The menu varies daily, but it’s always good. I like to mix a few of the salads in a box for about £5. Tastes great, healthy, yet filling. Take it back to the office or if weather is nice sit down at one of the benches in the Covent Garden market…

When I (rarely) get to work out of office instead of client sites, I really enjoy coming down to Kastner and Ovens for some takeaway. They have a huge selection of foods, everything from salads, soups, quiches, pies, pastries, cakes and sandwiches that it is sometimes difficult to decide what to have. I’m always torn about going early when there’s probably going to be a queue, or going a little bit later when it’s likely they have run out of their freshly made foods.
I think I end up spending around £6 each time I go, but I think this is the price you have to pay for amazingly fresh foods that are absolutely delicious.

Easily my favorite takeaway place in Covent Garden, Kastner and Ovens makes for a damn good lunch (as evidenced by the long lines out the door). The place is fairly small but they serve up a whole lot of homemade goodness, usually involving two hot specials a day plus a variety of fresh quiches, soups, sandwiches and salads. It’s a bit on the pricey side of things, but possibly some of best takeaway food I’ve ever had.