Fields, Clapham Common

In the middle of Clapham Common, effectively my hometown, is a skatepark.  I don’t really know why, but there's always seemed to be something edgy about it, even gritty.  When I was a little boy it felt like a spot where the cool kids might hang out, somewhere I should avoid or else face the consequences.  Not threatening exactly, more somewhere that you needed some kind of unspoken, informal membership to participate in.  And I definitely didn’t have that.  

As a 30 year old man I now know better.  The five year old zipping along on his scooter amongst the bigger kids with their decks belies that old stereotype (look carefully, centre of the picture).  But it remains, for me at least, a spot that still has a certain childhood allure of the gritty, trendy hangout.

So when I head that Fields, a new café / restaurant, was opening up in the hut next door, I knew that I finally had my way in and could visit unquestioned.

Fields is the second spot opened up by the people behind M1LKin Balham.  We've been down to Balham on a Saturday or Sunday morning quite a bit recently and have been shocked by what we've seen outside M1LK.  It's crazy.  Proper block-long queues.  Fields doesn’t quite suffer the same problem – perhaps because there is little passing trade, it being in the middle of the Common rather than off the high street.  But it still gets busy.  I've visited twice now, once at midday and once at 10am, and both times been able to get a seat immediately.  But on both occasions I have seen queues forming.

It's definitely trendy chic.  You can just feel the various staff and punters itching to beard-up and hipster-out.  The water bottles are labelled government juice.  But unlike so many other places, here it works, here it seems natural even sensible to be a bit hipster.  And for all its gritty surroundings (if, it is these days even that gritty any more) inside it's welcoming, warm, homely (in an admittedly utilitarian way).

We settled in and ordered up.  First out was the coffee, a delicious dark roast with only a slight twang of acidity (I like my coffee to taste like coffee, not citrus fruits, thank you).  

Coffee is ordered in a slightly unconventional way – essentially you order on the basis of how much milk you like with your espresso – 2.5 oz (macchiato / flat white), 6 oz (cappuccino) or 7.5 oz (large cappu / latte).  It’s a quirky idea and I'm cool with that.  The coffee is amazing, so no complaints whatsoever.

On the alternative-to-coffee front, this is my one disappointment.  GrubsterGirl ordered the nettle presse thinking it might be homemade.  It wasn't, which was a shame, albeit a delicious one.  My note to the restaurant is provide some juices.  Seriously.  Everyone's doing it these days.  And I really, really like juice to go with a cooked breakfast.  

Food (which needs to be ordered at the kitchen counter) came out rapidly.  First up was homemade crumpets, hay smoked goats' curd and Wandsworth honey.  

This was a treat and a half.  GrubsterGirl has not stopped going on about them – and she is a fierce critic of brunchfoods.  They were spectacularly done.  Light, fluffy crumpets twinned with tangy curds and sweet honey.  Triumphant.

At the other end of the brunch spectrum was Fields' twist on that most classic of brunchfoods, the eggs benedict.  

In this case, the only thing left resembling the humble benedict was the poached egg.  And rightly so, because holy moly these guys know what they’re doing.  You've got homemade sourdough toast subbing out the plain English muffin, coal-grilled drycure bacon kicks bland ham in to touch and, unbelievably, the hollandaise sauce is infused with – wait for it – espresso.  Yes, this is one pimped eggs benedict.

The outcome?  Marvellous.  Fantastic.  Hands down triumph, I could eat down every morsel without pausing for breath and happily order up a second round if my arteries didn’t stop me.  This is, quite simply, a ten out of ten dish.

I supplemented it with smoked field mushrooms.

These were delicious.  As a note, they like smoked stuff at fields.  Everything is cooked over coals and the menu even tells you what they are smoking with each day – on our visit it was Suffolk birch wood.  This seems a good time to drop in their laudable efforts to support the local economy as well – where possible they try to bring stuff in from nearby, be that the honey made (is honey made?) in Wandsworth, the bacon sourced from the local butchers, or salmon from a smoker on Stoke Newington.  Locally sourced produce is not always easy to achieve in the metropolis, but at least they are making an effort.

Last out, a croquet madam.

I had to look up the difference between a croquet madam and a croquet monsieur.  Basically the madam is the same as the monsieur except with a poached egg on top.  Or, in Fields' case, a smoked egg yolk – a perfectly oozy beautifully orange sphere.  This too met the standards that the other food had reached, except perhaps for the pickles which were a touch flaccid.  

Would I go to Fields again?  I already have.  It's fantastic.  I sat out in the sun the second time (they have a big terrace which is heated in colder weather) and it was almost more glorious than the first time around.  I'd go every week if I could – and I probably could, it's nowhere near as expensive as I had expected or as its rivals seem to charge.  

 - GrubsterBoy - 

Ben's Canteen

So the other day we went to have brunch with some friends we hadn’t seen for a long while.  I was asked to pick a venue, so (having been so rudely disappointed by The Breakfast Club) I plumped for Ben's Canteen, on St John's Hill.

Ben's occupies a spot that was, until a couple of years ago, a café called Out of the Blue.  It was a nice, bright café bar with a slightly less well lit rear dining area, decked out with ramshackle furniture, selling smoothies and benedicts to the brunching masses of Wandsworth.  Ben's is a nice, bright café bar with a slightly less well lit rear dining area, decked out with ramshackle furniture, selling smoothies and benedicts to the brunching masses of Wandsworth. 

So basically the same.  Except two differences:

1. Ben's does a wicked Bloody Mary, which I don’t recall OOTB doing.  Top marks for tastiness and spiciness.  Also, you get a free one if you Instagram a picture of your food with the hashtag #benscanteenmenu.  Which is just a ridiculously good offer.  Friend 2 even downloaded Instagram there and then so he could participate. 

2. OOTB did the most phenomenal garlic fries. We used to go for them alone. Garlic fries with breakfast? I can see you judging me, but I DON'T CARE they were just too GOOD. Ben, get on it, OK?

Right.  Onto the food they do serve.

GrubsterGirl and I both went for the Eggs Pig Out – like your regular egg benedict, except where they substitute ham for pulled pork.  I really don’t know why I ordered this – it does not sound, as I type, like a good idea.  Fortunately, it's a fantastic idea.  Really is – hits that salt & sweet thing that I love so much so well.  Well done, Ben.

I also supplemented mine with a side of smashed avocado (actually, let's call this what it is – guac without the spice and lime) which was yummy and went really well with the BBQ pig and egg and hollandaise sauce mess I'd created.

Friend 1 had spicy baked eggs with toast which I am reliably informed was good.  So all yums.

Friend 2 had Eggs Costa Brava – which is much the same as a eggy benny, but with chorizo instead of the ham.  You see a pattern emerging?  Also good, though.

Friends 1 & 2 have recently had a baby (hence the gap since we last met).  BabyFriend had pulped sweet potato that Friend 1 had brought with her.  It looked exactly like what I expect it looked like on the way out.  So I'm going to say BabyFriend didn’t win the ordering stakes.

Generally, Ben's done good.  Very nice food, good atmosphere (very tolerant of small people, which is good given that we had one with us).  There was a short wait for a table, and frankly I can see why.  If we lived nearby I'm certain we'd be there regularly.

- GrubsterBoy -

The Breakfast Club

Anyone who's hung about in the vicinity The Breakfast Club's various locations across this fine city will know it's popular.  You know it's popular because there's always a queue.  And the queue is always, always looooooong.

I remember when GrubsterGirl was living up in the barren northlands of Angel, during our early courtship days, we always used to go to a pub called the Elk in the Woods for brunch on a Saturday.  We always went because we always wanted to go The Breakfast Club and couldn’t get in and couldn’t face a 45 minute queue.  I remember thinking at the time "golly, that place must be good, why else would someone wait in the cold and the rain for the best part of an hour for a breakfast burrito?" (remember that this is before the time that burritos were big news, much less ones stuffed with breakfast) (and, yes, I am the kind of person that uses the word 'golly' in my internal monologue). 

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has done a study on this – I can see some version of Don Draper and Peggy Olsen hanging around in smoke-filled rooms chatting about the results of some survey or market research that proves it – we all know that the more popular a place is, or at least looks, the better it must be.  So goes The Breakfast Club.  It's good, and we know it's good, because there's always a complete fucker of a queue.

Which brings me to this: I finally went to The Breakfast Club. 

There's a new(ish) one in Battersea, at the top of the Clapham Common side of Battersea Rise.  It's been there a few months and is not too far a stretch from our home, although I have always been put off by the queues.  You see, the weekend it opened – on its very first day – I remember walking by and seeing an epic queue.  So I've always avoided it slightly.

But, you see, both GG and I were off on a working day, so we figured we would be safe, there would be no queue.

WE WERE WRONG.

OK, so the queue wasn't long.  In fact, it was non-existent when we arrived: there was another couple waiting to be seated when we walked in, but that was it. 

However, clearly smelling blood, we were taken outside and actively arranged in a queue.  This was odd, thought I, because there seemed to be some free tables inside – they must all be booked thought I, because otherwise they'd seat us.  As another couple walked by on the pavement I could see them clock that, even at 11am on a weekday morning The Breakfast Club had a queue, and I could see in their faces the dawning realisation that The Breakfast Club must be jolly good because it had a queue even at this decidedly off-peak time of day.  Just as I imagine it was dawning on my face that I was being played.

This realisation became a certainty when we were eventually seated and shown into a dining room that was, at best, half empty.  Quick note for the management: Being used as impromptu free marketing for a restaurant I'm about to give money to does not whet my appetite in any way; on the contrary it starts the meal with a slightly bitter taste.

We ordered drinks to enjoy whilst we read the menus: a pitcher of fresh 'beetlejuice', a medley of beetroot, carrot, apple and ginger.  We also ordered a couple of cappuccinos.  More about them later.

The menu is an eclectic mix – fun if you like a range of options at breakfast, drifting from their infamous breakfast burrito through the standard full English and eggs benedict, to more filling non-breakfasty foods. 

We ordered, to be shared between us, Boston Beans, a bowl of homemade baked beans with barbequed pork, a fried egg and French toast, and Huevos Al Benny, a bit like eggs benedict if you swapped the ham for chorizo, roasted peppers and guacamole and sprinkled the whole thing with fresh chillies and paprika.  The latter came with a side of home fried potatoes.  Don’t know why.

The beans were, at best, disappointing.  They were homemade, that part was accurate.  The egg was fried – although solid as a rock.  The pork was virtually non-existent.  By which I mean we go two scraps – one each, yay!

We liked the eggs.  It's not an obvious combo, but it's one that works.  The eggs were fresh and beautifully poached and the hollandaise had just the right balance of richness to vinegar.  The chorizo was good – although could have done with being peeled (no, really, it had an inedible, un-cuttable sausage skin that I'm pretty sure should have come off before cooking).  The avocado was good touch as well.  The home fries I could take or leave.

Oh, hang on what's this?  Yup, that would be a HAIR IN MY FOOD.  Not cool, Breakfast Club, not cool.  It's joked about a lot, but have you ever actually found a hair in your food?  I'm not sure that I have.  Or, at least, I hadn't until that day.  Sure, it was dealt with fairly well (swept away and replaced, albeit still charged for) but you know what's better than the chef leaving one of his black curly hairs in your food and then having it dealt with well?  Yup, that's right: the chef NOT leaving a hair in your food. 

You remember the juice and coffees I mentioned?  You know, the ones where I said "more about them later"?  OK, so these arrived now. 

This is an absolute pet hate of mine.  It's not that hard to get drinks out before food arrives.  Or, if it is, that's why I pay you to run a restaurant – and why I don’t, why I couldn’t.  So we had nothing to drink with the first half of our meal and a shed load to drink for the second. 

On the juice front, if I'm honest, I have absolutely no complaints.  It was yummy – really, really yummy.  And, what's more, when you order a pitcher at the price of three glasses, rather than two glasses separately, I'm always afraid that will mean you get 2.01 glasses worth of drink.  Not here: there was a noticeable uplift from the quantity I could see other people got given in their single servings and the amount we got (and I am assuming this isn’t because we got forgotten).  So well done, Breakfast Club, you score points here. 

This is not a good review, I'm aware of that.  And I am sorry.  I never actually intended to write one of these.  You see, the thing is that blog-keeping is time consuming, and takes energy, and I wanted to do it to get away from negative things and to have a happy place.  So I decided from the outset that I wasn't going to deliberately write negative reviews – if I thought somewhere was pants, I just wouldn’t blog it. 

But this just wound me up.  Because it wasn't spectacular - or even especially good - even when they got it right.  Notwithstanding the unnecessary wait for a table, notwithstanding the fact that I involuntarily became part of their advertising, notwithstanding that our drinks were ridiculously late, notwithstanding the beans being boring and missing half of their ingredients, notwithstanding boring home fries, notwithstanding the HAIR IN MY FOOD, it was... OK, I guess.  And that is not enough to outweigh all of its issues.  It certainly doesn’t come close to enough to justify standing in line for your dinner.

 - GrubsterBoy -

PS: If you're reading this from Angel, and thinking about going to the Breakfast Club, can I heartily recommend The Elk in the Woods instead.  Or, alternatively, The Winchester is similarly jolly good and used to be extraordinarily good value.

Brunch at the Gilbert Scott

I was slightly saddened, some years ago, when it was announced that the Eurostar would no longer be leaving from Waterloo, but would instead depart from a much-pimped out St Pancras; the little irony of the train to France leaving from a station named after Britain's greatest military victory over said country always tickled me, somewhat.

Nevertheless, the renovation has been spectacular, producing a first-class international station.  But, for me, the greatest achievement has been the conversion of the former railway offices into the (rather unimaginatively named) St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel.  Formerly the Midland Grand Hotel, before its sixty-plus year stint as offices, this has got to be one of the most beautiful buildings in London.

It's also the home of Marcus Wareing's latest venture, The Gilbert Scott.  In search of a suitable birthday venue, GrubsterGirl and I headed down for a spot of brunch.

Proceedings were kicked off with a round of Bloody Maria's: all the usual Bloody Mary ingredients (an essential for brunch, I feel) with the innovative substitution of vodka for tequila, and lime taking the place of lemon.  Very tasty, and a guaranteed eye-opener.  Lots of people have an aversion to tequila, doubtless obtained through countless nightclub slammer experiences, which I think is often unfair.  Here, the addition of tequila really works – which is hardly surprising when you think that Mexican's often chase the stuff with sangrita: a medley of tomato, orange, lime and green chilli. 

A nice little pickled chilli adorned the glass, which was a bonus: the addition of an undertone of vinegar actually improved rather than detracted (as one might expect) from the experience.

Rather unimaginatively, we followed our drinks with eggs benedict, that finest of brunch grubs.  Rather disappointingly for the blog, we both had exactly the same – so sorry, this review at least is rather limited. 

But these were no ordinary eggs benedict.  No, these were crab eggs benedict.  Now, I'm a complete sucker for crab, so the die was kinda cast the moment I saw them on the menu – I couldn’t help myself.  But I did have reservations: crab is a delicate flavour, in many respects, and one that could be easily lost piled underneath rich hollandaise sauce.  Marcus (or his little sous chef) has clearly anticipated this, and supplied enough crab meat to keep one going (and tasting) all day. 

 

It was very good, no doubt about it.  Nice hollandaise, perfectly cooked egg, lots of rich, tasty white crab meat, warmed plates, the works.  Very nicely done.

But on the expensive side.  Pre-tip, and including a coffee each as well, out brekkie came out at £55.69.  Not too bad, given what we were eating, but not one to do every weekend.

 - GrubsterBoy -