Pavilion, 4th June

In the endless requests for good places for brunch/eggs benedict/breakfast that get sent into Secret London on twitter (seriously, does no one ever bother to see what people have said previously?), Pavilion gets mentioned often. It’s just up the road from me in Victoria Park, but for some reason I hadn’t yet really wanted to bother trying it. Until we went up there for a picnic and I saw the menu, the dishes coming out and the freshly baked bread sitting on the side.

Two weeks later and the weather had gone decidedly downhill but we thought this would work in our favour for getting a seat at this small but popular place. It turned out they were doing a roaring trade (and we overheard that they were much busier than even they were expecting) but luckily we still managed to nab a bit of table inside. Pavilion’s name gives you a clue as to what it is – it is a little Pavilion in the park and isn’t much to look at. There are a few outside tables, and of course, the entire park to take your meal to, and inside are a few bench-type tables with basic chairs, and probably some remnants from the last person’s meal on or around your seat.

But the quality of the food is top notch. They serve breakfast type dishes like three all kinds of eggs (benedict, florentine, scrambled etc), various brekkie-type sandwiches and a choice of two full breakfasts – one with black pudding and two eggs, one with mushrooms, tomato and one egg (or something like that, Stephen had the non-black pudding one by mistake). They also have a pancake option which sounded delicious. Then they do some lunch options such as a few different salads and the irresistible-to-me chorizo, aioli, roasted red peppers and rocket focaccia sandwich.

Both our choices were delicious and it was obvious from the taste that Pavilion use top quality, organic or free range ingredients. They even tell you on one of their big boards who is producing the food you’re eating. One slight complaint was that the sausage in Stephen’s breakfast was a little dry (which I’ve noticed seems to be a sign of sausages made from good quality meat, maybe not enough of the fatty bad stuff is in them!). The beans I think were worth a special mention, and you can tell from the colour of that yolk that it was a good'un. 

That looks a bit like black pudding on the plate, but I'm pretty sure it's mushroom.

My only complaint of my sandwich was that it was huge and difficult to eat. I could probably have been happy with just half of it. The chorizo was full of flavour, as was the roasted pepper - one of the best roasted peppers I've had in a good long while. The rocket did what it was supposed to do - but through the fat of the sausage and all topped off with lovely garlickiness, which I can never get enough of.

There is chorizo in there somewhere - lots of it!

There were also some cakes and coffee for sale but after eating our brunch we had no room for any of that. We had hoped to get a loaf of bread to take back with us but they didn’t seem to have any so we had to take a walk up to E5 Bakehouse instead (certainly no hardship).

This is definitely going to become a regular haunt for us. It's great value for money (eggs on various things around £6.00) and I can't not try their pancakes. 

Albion cafe, 12th May

The Albion cafe and bakery/deli is on the ground floor of the Boundary Project - Terence Conran's hotel and restaurant. It is the more affordable option if you want to eat in this establishment (my lunch came to a total of £15 including tip). My friend was in town and suggested meeting up for lunch, somewhere east and so I gave her a couple of options, including Albion. After researching it on her smartphone (what would we do without them) she said the Albion sounded good. We met at 12:30 and while I waited for them to arrive I had a look around the bakery/deli at the front of the cafe.

It was all so utterly tempting. They sell a lot of organic produce like all different kinds of muesli, fresh breads (rosemary and apricot particularly caught my eye) and jams etc. And then, behind the cash register, they sell freshly made sandwiches and pies and all kinds of wonderful-looking cakes and pastries. They do a cookie the same diameter as my head (or possibly larger), flapjakcs, salted caramel tarts - ooh, so much sugary, chocolatey goodness. 

But my friends arrived and we were there for a sit down meal and so I only looked at these before getting seated in the cafe. It was a nice day, and we could have sat outside, but the interior was very pleasant. It has high ceilings, is bright and airy and the kitchen is open so you can see them making all the delicious breads, which are then lined up on the counter.

We had a beverage while we decided - some pear juice for my friend, a hot chocolate for her boyfriend, and an apple juice for me. The hot chocolate, it was said by my companions, was top quality. I wanted to mention this because these guys know their hot chocolate. They do not simply have a jar of instant Options in their cupboard - they have a "collection" so you know if they say it's good, it really is top notch. 

And on to the food. I ordered a cheese omelette with beef dripping chips and my friend ordered one of the wonderful-looking savoury pastries we had seen in the store - a bacon and cheese fougasse. 

At first I wasn't sure about my omelette. It was just freshly cooked and the fat from the cheese inside was making it a bit liquidy. However, after a couple of minutes once the cheese had congealed a little and therefore turned more gooey instead of liquid, it was very nice. The cheese didn't just provide a pleasant chewy, stringiness to the omelette, it was also strong enough for the flavour to come through. The chips were also good - they were no Bull and Last titans, but as far as chips go, better than average.

Omelette, chips and real apple juice

The real star was the Fougasse. Not on the menu but they were happy for us to order anything we'd seen in the shop. My friend ordered the bacon and cheese version and it was excellent. The meat tasted bacony but wasn't exactly a slab of Danepak. It was more like crispy lardons in it's texture. They had clearly seasoned it with herbs or spices of some sort but we couldn't work out what, tasting it blind. Whatever it was, it worked.

I was too full to order any of the cakes I'd been eyeing up when we first got there, which is a bit of a regret. I suppose I can always go back! For a sunny Saturday early afternoon, it was very easy to get a space, which is reassuring, as they don't take bookings for fewer than six people.  

The Diner, 20th November

Ok, so I know this is beginning to look suspiciously like a food blog. And the next few posts are not going to do anything to dissuade you of that notion. But bear with me - I will have non-food related posts very soon. I'm working to a backlog so this is not an empty promise - I have something in mind I will write up very soon.

Right. On to the topic in question - The Diner. For brunch. 

I've actually been to the Diner once before years ago, but I didn't have anything to eat. My companion had a burrito. This same companion was with me when we went back the other weekend for brunch. We had first tried the Breakfast Club in Liverpool Street but there was a pretty big queue so we had to find somewhere else. The Diner in Shoreditch also had a bit of a wait, but only about 15 minutes. I didn't remember what the menu was like before, but the Diner had been popping up in recommendations for brunch in stuff like Secret London and Yelp so I wanted to give it a try.

The menu for the breakfast type stuff was extensive. It was quite a task to decide. I thought I was in the mood for pancakes but after careful perusal the western eggs seemed to be calling me. Western eggs - scrambled eggs with onions, peppers and cheese. Stephen, for some strange reason decided to go for the burrito again. I didn't think this was really in the spirit of brunch but he seemed to recall the burrito being good and couldn't be convinced to order otherwise.

I also ordered a side of toast and some hash browns.

This was a mistake. A slightly embarrassing mistake. I did not realise that the portion of eggs would be phenomenal and that they would also come with a side of home fries with onions. I looked like a total greedy pig. I forgot to take a picture and I deeply regret it. The food looked delicious when it arrived and it tasted even better with my mouth than it had with my eyes. The toast and hash browns were completely superfluous, though I did my best to get through them.

As it happens, it was quite fortuitous that I ordered the sides - not for me, but for Stephen.

His steak burrito was a disappointment. He gave me some precise adjectives to use to describe it but I can't remember them now.* It didn't live up to his memory of it and I think the problem was this: he had last eaten the burrito before the proliferation of all the very good burrito places over here. He had nothing to really compare it to at the time. But now he did and it was found sadly lacking. As I said before, I had over-ordered and this was lucky because he made up for the lack in both quality and size of the burrito by finishing off my hash browns. They were tasty.

So, to conclude - I shall be going back to The Diner. There are many more breakfast items that I have faith they do very well that I wish to sample. But I will probably stay away from any of the other things on the menu... apart from the hard shakes. I bet they're good.
*I consulted stephen about his burrito and he wishes me to say that there wasn't enough rice, not enough steak which was dry anyway, and too much of that crappy American cheese.