The Breakfast Club Soho

The Breakfast Club is a bright yellow cafe on Poland street in Soho. Ther eis also a branc in Islington, but we visited the Soho one. It is named after the 80's film of the same name and of which I am very fond. The music also has a decidedly 80's feel, but in a good way.

Anyway, the food; they serve breakfast of course, at the weekend anyway and a few more lunchy things during the week. We had eggs, scrambled for Joff and fried for me. They also do pancakes, classic breakfasts, yoghurt and cereal, bagels and smoothies, toast etc.

The eggs were good, well I think the scrambled were good and mine were ok, but mostly because they both came with tomato chutney which I didn't pay a lot of attention to on the menu but which I couldn't avoid on the plate. The chutney had an incredibly overpowering vinegary smell that actually made my stomach lurch and I had to shove it to one side before I could tackle the egss. But that may be just me, Joff had no such problems, he didn't actually eat the cutney mind you but it didn't actually make him feel sick. Back to the eggs, they were nice enough (would have been better without chutney) and the toast was lovely thick slices of buttery granary. The coffee however was really very good, nice and strong and not too much milk. We had carrot cake to follow which was also excellent, actually tasted home made and the icing was delicious but not overpowering.

The eggs were £4.00 and the coffee £2.30, which is about right for Soho. The place has a good lively atmosphere, and the decor is laid back student style but without being too grungy. The clientele were youngish and trendy (not necessarily including us). I would go back and probably try the pancakes or the scrambled eggs, strictly no chutney, with lashings of coffee and carrot cake.

Breakfast at Cha Cha Moon

I need to say before we start that I am not a fan of Chinese food. I went to Cha Cha Moon to meet friends and to check out the new breakfast menu, and it was free. So there we are.

Cha Cha Moon has just started serving Breakfast. We went to the one in Ganton Street. The first thing I noticed was how nice it was to be in Oxford street at 10 O'Clock on a Sunday morning. Most of the shops were closed and it was more or less deserted, excellent for window shopping and noticing that actually, some of those side streets are realy quite attractive when not stuffed with shoppers. 

Ch Cha Moon is owned by Alan Yau, he of Wagamama, Yauatcha and Hakkasan. It is basically a noodle bar with a slick interior, comfortable bench seating, low lighting and very friendly staff. The food is very reasonably priced, both for breakfast and dinner. For breakfast the most expensive dish is £6 and most are below that. The menu is short and centres around asian style breakfast favourites, for example Salmon Porridge and Crispy Duck Breakfast Wrap. Both of which sound wrong to me but I think that it is my general aversion to the style of food rather than the food itself. One of my friends ordered the crispy duck wrap and it looked, and apparently was, very good. The duck was juicy but not greay and the wrap was toasted which made it look much more appetising than wraps usually do. The salmon in the Salmon Porridge was apparently well cooked and tasty but the porridge was swimming in cream and went largely uneaten.

I had a taste of Brioche french toast (£3.80) and a whole pancake with raspberry compote (££3.60), presumably on the menu for cowards like me. The Brioche French Toast was a little too sweet but looked soft and fluffy and the 2 year old I was with loved it.  The Pancake was excellent, less sweet than the french toast, very good texture and savoury enough to offset the raspberries.  

And now the eggs: normally as anyone who reads this blog may know I would order the eggs. They came in several styles, scrambled, fried and in a frittata. However, in keeping wth the rest of the menu they were not ordinary hens eggs but duck eggs. Duck eggs! Now call me squeamish but I have tried to eat duck eggs twice and both times have failed to eat more than a mouthful. In my opinion, and I realise that many will disagree, they smell and taste of fish, and I don't want that in an egg.  

The coffee is good and served in attractive porcelain mugs without handles and the smoothies were unusual and tasty.  I would recommend the more adventurous among you, or just those that like this type of food, to try it, if onyl once. The food is cheap and well presented.  And if you feel like I do about this type of food, go, watch others eat duck eggs and order the pancake.

Maroush V

Maroush is a chain of Lebanese restaurants, and we went to number five, on Vere Street just off Oxford street. It looks very grand from the outside but is rather more cafe like inside. There are two elements to the Maroush V experience; the food and the atmosphere.

The food is fresh and tasty, salads liberallly seasoned with lemon juice, falafel just cooked and perfectly crispy on the outside and the hummus has just the right amount of tahini in it. Obvioulsy we only ate vegetarian food but the meats certainly smelled good and from what I could gather by staring at other people's food, looked good too. It is all reasonably priced, apart from the wine, which is available but not the main feature, this being a Lebanese restaurant. We had to ask twice for the wine menu, the cheapest bottle was £18 and there were only a couple of those before it leapt up to £28 a bottle.

Which brings me to the atmosphere; when we arrived there were two couples there both eating studiously and saying not a word to each other. I am sure they were enjoying their food but they certainly didn't contribute to an atmosphere of jollity and frivolity, and I like a bit of that when I go out to eat. The waiters were helpful but grim faced and I was feeling a little uneasy until the rest of our party arrived and we made enough noise to drown out the misery.

I suppose people go there to eat, adn the food is absolutely worth going for, good, fresh, well seasoned food at about £15 per head. However, if you want something a little less functional than simply going, eating and leaving, I would take a couple of lively dining companions to break the silence.

Ottolenghi

Ottolenghi is a strange beast, I refer to the Islington branch as it is the only one I have visited. I have been twice so far and am not sure I will go back. Both times we went before going to see a play at the Almeida (this time, Parlour Song, which we both thought was awful but which everyone else seemed to find hilarious) as it seemed to suit a pre theatre type dinner, what with it's cafe style tables and piles of food on the counters.

The decor is all white, the waiters attractive and clad in black. There are several long shared tables in the centre of the restaurant and other smaller, bookable tables around the side. The menu is divided into 'From the Counter' (cold) and 'From the Kitchen' (hot). From the Counter dishes cost between £6 and £8 and From the Kitchen cost about £10 on average. Dishes are 'for sharing' which means that they are small and you have to order a lot, they recommend about 3 each.

There is nothing wrong with this concept it is just that really what it means is cold food and hot food and I slightly resent the tarted up labels. Particularly as when you order a hot dish the waiter leans in and says 'that dish is From The Kitchen and will take a little longer, we will bring it when it is ready (ie not with the rest of the food) is that ok?'. And I suppose it is ok, it's just that what they mean is that they are going to cook it and bring it when it is cooked, which is what usually happens when you go to a restaurant.

The food itself is very good. As a vegetarian you are basically getting small plates of vegetables, but they are very well seasoned, inventively presented vegetables, green beans with chili jam, ricotta stuffed courgette flowers, griddled courgette with artichoke and black lentils. All delicious. However, there is also something unsatisfying about it all. Probably because it is well cooked, simple buffet/tapas style food presented as a 'concept'. And it is expensive for what it is. £8 for a plate of green beans, however delicious, seems like a lot.

I want to like Ottolenghi, which is why I went back, and I think I would like it better if they were a little more honest about what they were serving and presented themselves in a less earnest and aspirational way.

The Table

The Table is a cafe at the bottom of an architects office on Southwark street (just behind The Tate), so as you would expect it is all clean lines and natural wood. The food has all the usual credentials, locallly sourced organic etc, which are now less likely to make a place remarkable. However the food here is good, very good in fact.

I know it will come as no surprise when I say that we go there to have eggs. This could mean that we have a monotonous diet or that eggs are a good benchmark with which to measure most restuarants, take your pick. Anyway we had eggs. So far I have had fried and scrambled and Joff has had poached and scrambled. All were excellent, the yokes runny in the fried eggs and the scrambled were perfectly creamy but not too runny. The bread, from an award winning bakery, is sliced thickly and seemingly toasted on a griddle pan which gives it a smoky, almost burnt flavour. Lovely. The ccoffee is good and the service friendly. As far as puddings go I have only had a slice of banana bread which had a toffee ish consistency and was much nicer than it looked.

The eggs cost £4 and the coffee is how much it usually costs in this type of place, which means I have forgotten but it didn't make me shout so it can't have been a lot. They are open 7 - 5 weekdays and 9 - 3 on weekends.