Category:Bistro (££)
Glorious Saturday brunch,how much I love you! After a lazy lie-in just throw on some clothes,grab a newspaper or a novel and find yourself a table at your favourite breakfast joint.
It is very bad when this precious time of the week is destroyed by bad food,service or –the worst option of them all –you can’t get a table (and queuing on a Saturday morning is bad…). This Saturday morning everything worked out to perfection.
We only had to wait a few minutes until we got a place at Baker &Spice in the backstreet of Chelsea. This gave me just enough time to explore this little bakery/cafe,admire the delicacies and nurture my appetite.
So many good looking pastries,impossible to have only one?
Here a choice of their breads.
Apart from the normal breakfast fare they serve the most amazing looking,fresh and delectable salads.
To start our weekend the healthiest way possible (knowing that it will only go downward from then on),we chose the Scrambled Egg with Scottish Salmon and a plate with a choice of 4 of the salads. We nearly fell out while trying to decide which salads to go for but finally agreed on a selection,the weekend peace saved.
While I was enjoying the fragrant jasmine tea and reading the newspaper,the toast which came with the eggs already arrived. Beautiful steaming brown bread with whole grains was served with a little dish of white butter and delicious strawberry preserve.
The Scrambled Eggs with Salmon were as good as it can get. The fluffy eggs and the generous serving of high quality salmon went down really nicely.
Then we moved to the salads. The portion again was more than generous (having said that,it was not cheap either…) and all 4 variants were very tasty indeed. My favourite was the rucola salad with slices of perfectly ripe avocado and papaya. What a combination! Beautiful also the mixture of feta,sweet potato and beetroot as well as the crunchy green beans with pomegranate seeds. So good and so good for you!
The downside –it’s not cheap. For the two dishes,one jasmine tea,one cappuccino and one freshly squeezed orange juice we paid 38 pounds. But consider,you certainly won’t need any lunch…
The service by the way is NOT included,such a rarity nowadays that it deserves a positive mention. The clientele is very much Chelsea (meaning that you feel a bit of an outsider when you don’t have a designer bag and don’t quite manage the ‘I have just woken up but my hair still looks great’look) but this is not necessarily bad as it does for some good people watching.
- Food: 7.5/10
- Service: 6/10
- Ambiance:6/10
- Value for Money:6/10
- Chances of Returning: 40%
- Verdict:Amazing little brunch place,which I shouldn’t tell you about because I might not get a table that easily next time…
I just went here 2 weeks ago a new cupcake place is just down the road from it
I didn’t like it at all. It was the most overpriced breakfast I’d had in my life! £8 for scrambeled eggs you’re joking! The service was so so bad. I’d give breakfast a miss and go get one of their lunch items for takeaway (they looked a lot better than the breakfast items). I just went to The Cabin in Chiswick for brunch yesterday it was great and peaceful in there!
@ Kelly –Oh really,that’s interesting! It is pricey yes but I have to say that I ate at Tom’s Kitchen (the Tom Aikens place) which is just around the corner and there the breakfast was even more expensive but not even good…So maybe I am applying Chelsea-double standards here…
Re service,it was not as bad as you describe it but I found it a bit weird that after I told one of the waitresses that their toilet was blocked (I will spare you the unpleasant details) she just looked at me blankly,why I would be telling her something like this.
The Cabin sounds good,if I ever get to Chiswick it’s top on my list
@ Kelly – and how was the cupcake place?
Yum,Yum,Yum! The pictures look amazing. And I agree,Tom’s Kitchen is way over rated.
For some reason I wasn’t “subscribed”to this but anyway…
Cupcake place is cute and pink! German lady,Peggy Porschen,that makes cakes for rich people has opened a shop for us poor Peasants to have a taste! It’s very cute and the cake is very good
The waitress kept giving us that same look about everything like when I wanted a menu after waiting for 15 mintues…I will skip this place and have cupcakes for breakfast instead
I’ve been to Tom’s kitchen as well and agree that the service there is even worse and food portions are far too small! Best solution is to make pancakes myself!
@ Thanks
that’s what a new camera does…I was so disappointed by Tom’s Kitchen,the breakfast there was close to inedible actually. you can do a lot it seems with a famous name…
@ Kelly –I have heard of Peggy Porschen,have to check it out next time I’m in this area. Pink sounds fun
(I do have my pink moods…)
I wish I could make pancakes really,I think I have to learn some baking from you…I have only discovered pancakes when I went to the US for the first time a couple of years ago and I just love them. With loads of maple syrup