For patrons of Robin Birley’s private members’ clubs – 5 Hertford Street and Oswald’s – a highlight of any visit is the range of breads and pastries on offer: moreish is an understatement. But at least this extreme carbohydrate temptation was limited to within those walls. Until now.

For Birley, along with his long-time executive pastry chef, Vincent Zanardi, and head baker, Eshak Belabed, has now opened Birley Bakery on Chelsea Green, aka Cale Street, in SW3. The shop is a modern take on a classic French boulangerie patisserie – the elegant, gilded interior is the work of Notting Hill-based JR Design and is an interpretation of Japonisme, the late-19^th century movement that inspired Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and, over a century later, London muralist Lizzi Porter, who has hand-painted the walls here.

Chelsea Green is the home of the new Birley Bakery

The food at Birley’s Bakery similarly reflects a time when global influences were welcomed into classic French creative traditions. Both Zanardi and Belabed have worked in Austria, which many would say is the superior of France for bread, with the latter also having spent time in the Middle East. And Zanardi is geographically specific when he imports ingredients: chocolate from Switzerland; vanilla from Tahiti; hazelnuts from Piedmont, but almonds from Valencia. Even when the source is closer to home (sea salt from Brittany; honey from Bermondsey), he is specific. For example, Zanardi is the sole UK customer of an artisanal wheat flour miller in Burgundy. A world’s worth of superior ingredients, but the majority are there to create the best iterations of French favourites. Croissants, pains au chocolat, brioches, etc give way to madeleines with a mid-morning coffee and some remembrance of lost times. Then there are the teatime treats… lemon merigue tartlet; Paris-Brest (praline-filled choux, not an obscure airport used by Ryanair); Tarte Tropézienne (lemon cream-filled brioche). Some étrangers favourites are given a French twist: New York-style cheesecake has a mango glaze; banoffee pie is made with compote-soaked banana bread, vanilla salted caramel and a mascarpone Chantilly.

As well as baked goods, the bakery sells ice cream and a range of confectionery, including almond and popcorn dragées and homemade pralines, with such original flavours as matcha lemon, dark chocolate peanut and blonde chocolate dulce.

The savoury side of the bakery gets as fair a shake as the sweet. It is, after all, a boulangerie pâtisserie, so bread is central to the offering. Many of the varieties are familiar from the bread baskets of 5 Hertford Street and Oswald’s: sourdough loaves, seeded baguettes, olive bread, rye, tapenade rolls. There are also specialist breads, including the rich-fibre loaf, created with unsifted wholemeal flour.

Among the savoury lunchtime dishes is one of Birley Bakery’s signature offerings: the “cravat” – a fold of crunchy, flaky puff pastry delivering a savoury filling – tomato, mozzarella and basil; roasted vegetables and pumpkin seeds; pissaladière (olive, anchovy and confit onions); pork hot dog. The name came from an early attempt that was unmanageably long – and Zanardi told Birley, ‘It looks like a tie.’

The phrase “a modern take” can often set off alarm bells because it so often means abandoning things that are costly and time-consuming to produce. But the modernising twists in the Birley Bakery offering are there for good reasons. One of those is inventiveness, as in the cravat. Further reasons to update a culinary heritage come from modern dietary requirements. French patisseries are traditionally places of worship for devotees of butter and eggs. Birley Bakery offers several items that shake those temple pillars by containing neither: eggless flan, butter-free chocolate-chip cookies and even a plant-based version of the pork hot dog cravat.

Oh, and resisting that temptation to overindulge? Well, Birley Bakery has somehow halved the amount of fat and sugar in many recipes, without losing the rich flavours, so there is every excuse to give in to it.

Birley Bakery, 28-30 Cale Street, London SW3 3QU