Brunch
Fatteh is the whole point at T by Tamara, a Marylebone café where founder Tamara Al Saadi, who has Palestinian and Jordanian roots, runs London’s only fatteh bar. Build your own bowl from pitta, chickpeas and garlic yoghurt, topped with anything from sumac-spiced chicken to tomato aubergine, in a room filled with tiles from Jerusalem, mirrors from Jordan and small keys that nod to the Palestinian right of return. Don’t leave without a slice of Tamara’s grandmother’s olive oil sponge cake, no celebration required.
This buzzy neighbourhood cafe is the ideal spot for a weekend meet-up with friends. Brunch staples like shakshuka, avo toast and full fry ups are served until 3pm, while larger burgers, burritos and sandwiches are available from 12pm. Archie’s also plays host to frequent supper clubs, and if you’re craving an afternoon cocktail, the well-stocked bar is ready and waiting.
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so why head anywhere other than Dobar, the self-proclaimed “best breakfast spot in town”? Whether you choose a Mediterranean-inspired dish like çılbır or sujuk, indulge in loaded pancakes or French toast, or stick with a classic fry-up, you’ll leave Dobar ready to take on the day.
If you like some BIG Aussie vibes whilst you’re brunching, then Milk Beach in Soho is the place to go. If you like to start your mornings with something sweet, don’t miss Granny Elly’s banana bread served with coffee jam, or the fluffy hotcakes with brûlée banana and honeycomb butter. If you’re on a savoury vibe (or you’re planning to do a two-courser), the sweet potato fritters with smoked salmon, poached eggs and dill yoghurt and the chilli scramble with stracciatella, sourdough and citrus herbs. Wash it down with a flat white and a Golden Glow juice and pretend you’re Down Under (just don’t look outside at the weather).
Yauatcha is one of our favourite London restaurants – and there’s a great new way to try it out. Every Saturday, between 12 and 6pm they offer an Infinite Yum Cha menu for £45 per person, and the best part is that includes an UNLIMITED selection of dim sum. Brunch begins with the Tales of Negroni cocktail, made with Tanqueray No. TEN, tea infusion, Campari, Antica Formula, plum wine, coconut, and popcorn (non booze option is also available). Then comes the dim sum: Pork and Prawn Shui Mai, Har Gau, and Seafood Black Truffle; Venison Puff and Edamame Puff; and Char Siu Bao and Pan-Fried Classic Vegetarian Bao. You can order as many rounds of these as you like. You also get a choice of main course, either the Stir-Fried Rib Eye Beef, Stir-Fried Scallop and Prawn, or Spicy Chilean Sea Bass Curry, each served with a choice of egg fried rice or jasmine rice. For dessert, there’s a little Soufflé Pancake topped with honeycomb. All in all, a steal for £45.
Jazu may be known for cocktails and spinning vinyl, but its new brunch menu has us tempted to dance the night away at the bar and stay for brekkie in the morning. Grab a pew next to the record player and place an order for a couple of coffees and a juice before you get stuck into the food. It has all the classics, like a full or veggie English, eggs or avocado (or both!) on toast, breakfast baps, and some sweet French toast options. Defo a spot to check out if you’re in New Cross.
Brick Lane’s Café 1001, best known as a vinyl bar, now does breakfast, and what a breakfast it is. They’ve drafted in BBQ specialists Cue Point, founded by Mursal Saiq and Joshua Moroney, to put together the menu, which blends brekkie classics with Bangladeshi and Afghan flavours. It includes dishes like bubble & squeak muffin with egg, American cheese, sautéed spiced artichoke and masala dust; Lea & Perrins cheddar melt with masala baked beans; masala baked eggs and sourdough; and house hash browns with house chilli mayo. If you like to start the day the sweet way, you’ll find it hard to beat cardamom brûleed challah with maple butter. All that needs is a chai – and maybe a Bloody Mary – and you’re set.
The main menu at Dovetale, Tom Anglesea’s restaurant inside the 1 Mayfair Hotel, is killer and happily the weekend brunch offering is just as good. Classics like a Full English and eggs benedict are present and correct but you won’t wanna miss the beef cheek potato hash with fried duck egg and mojo verde, the fried crab omelette with shredded slaw and nam jim, or the excellent buttermilk fried chicken with waffles, which comes with sour cream and chives, maple syrup and hot sauce butter for drizzling. A side of impossibly crispy Marmite onion rings is a must – balance it out with one of the expertly dressed green salads – but if you’re feeling really bougie you can add an order of caviar. The restaurant’s famous Knickerbocker Glory trolley has been transformed into a build-your-own frozen margarita station, so you can create your perfect Casamigos cocktail (our order: blanco tequila, fresh apricot, lime salt & mint). Dovetale already boasts one of the best dining rooms in the city but it gets even better with the addition of live music from 1pm.
The Good Egg has long been a Stokey fave thanks to its Middle Eastern menu, inspired by Tel Aviv street food, and the Jewish delis and bagel shops in NYC and Montreal. In Stokey, the brunch menu features treats bacon & date pitas, egg & cheese bagels, shakshuka, challah French toast, and babka. It’s also open into the evenings, meaning you can feast on sharing plates like labneh with pumpkin seed relish, za’atar fried chicken with chilli honey, lamb shawarma with pickles & hummus and cornbread with zhoug & honey butter.
A Middle Eastern breakfast is one of the great joys in life and at modern Palestinian restaurant akub in Notting Hill, the brunch certainly delivers on that front – and there aren’t many prettier rooms to have it in than akub’s light-filled and olive tree-adorned main space. In fact, it’s filled with such delish sounding dishes it’s quite the task narrowing it down, but one not to miss is the Arabic coffee French toast, with crisped-up fluffy brioche, whipped laban, crushed pistachios and a sweet, spiced Arabic coffee syrup. Well done Fadi Kattan. That’s locked in for dessert but before you get there, tuck into the likes of zahra cauliflower fritters with coriander tahinia, slow-cooked tomatoes with eggs & green chilli, grilled nabulsi cheese with nigella seed oil, and aubergine fatteh. And go heavy on the dips and the bread – labeneh and zaatar bread is a winning combo. If you’re looking for an extra kick, there are spice-infused brunch cocktails on offer or you can opt for traditional Arabic coffee to get your weekend going.
A great breakfast sandwich is hard to beat and Fallow knows it, which is exactly why they’re at the heart of the restaurant’s brunch menu. But these are no regular brekkie baps or muffins because the Fallow team has created a bespoke croissant dough bun to hold the fillings, like the Royale with cheese (with sausage, bacon, kombu ketchup, egg, cheese & sriracha) and the Mushroom royale (with Fallow’s epic mushroom parfait, grilled mushroom, egg & cheese). With buttery pastry dough, top quality ingredients, they’re like McMuffins on steroids – add on some of the supremely crispy hash browns with sour cream & walnut ketchup and a spicy Bloody Mary and you’ve got the most decadent way to start a Saturday. They haven’t forgotten about all you sweet-toothed peeps either because there’s a whey caramel royale for afters, which you absolutely won’t want to miss.
The art-filled Mount St. Restaurant has proven itself to be a dreamy setting for any and all meals of the day – particularly after it launched a killer breakfast offering, which is served between 7.30-10.30am on weekdays and 8-10.30am on weekends. It’s Mayfair, so you might head in imagining something quite traditional, but prepare to be very pleasantly surprised. The creamy porridge is spiked with a dram of whiskey, the omelettes are topped with Oscietra caviar and the bacon chop (combined with bubble & squeak and a fried duck egg) is unlike any other you’ve had. Expect to be surrounded by Warhols and Picassos, designer furnishings and maybe even a celebrity or two (Alexa Chung and Logan Roy have popped in in the past).
Brightly coloured vegan restaurant Club Mexicana is known for taking over your insta feed with some of the best plant-based Mexican food in London. It’s recently launched a new brunch menu, that’s available every weekend at its Spitalfields site. Living up to the name, the menu is banging and includes a selection of its vegan takes on the classics like the mex-shuka and a Mexicana fry-up (featuring probably the longest vegan chorizo in London). It wouldn’t be brunch without a cocktail, and all can be washed down with some of the special brunch tipples, our personal favourite being the marmalade margarita. Available Sat and Sun, head there for plenty of fun energy and a knock-out vegan brunch.
Bala Baya, from Israeli born chef Eran Tibi, is all about bringing a taste of Tel Aviv to Southwark and there’s no better way to dive in than with the Brunch Feast. Kick off with a sharing selection of mezze, including pink tarama, labneh & za’atar, and some of the best tahini in town alongside plenty of fluffy pitas for dipping. Then it’s onto mains – we particularly rate the Fish Clouds, herb-packed smoked haddock fish cakes with tarama, fennel & apple salad and a poached egg, and the Breakfast Brisket Doughnut, rich beef brisket with bonfire tomato & chilli and spiced jus, served on a Tunisian doughnut with amba tahini and a fried egg. It’s a bit like a Middle Eastern-meets-BBQ take on an eggs benny and it’s real good. You finish off with a taster trio of puds – quince pudding with a meringue top and creme anglaise, burnt pistachio babka with blackberry compote, and coconut malabi with black tahini – saving you the trouble of trying to choose between them. Add on a jug of gazoz soda (which you can spike with booze if you’re so inclined) and you’ve got yourself a real good time.
Already well established at its Charlotte Street and Flat Iron Square locations, Where The Pancakes Are was one of the first restaurants to open inside the redeveloped Battersea Power Station. The all-day, all-pancakes spot isn’t exactly what you’d expect, with a menu of both savoury and sweet options and combos you never thought you’d see atop a stack. The menu changes seasonally, but some highlights include pulled beef pastrami pancakes with cheddar and sauerkraut, kale slaw and homemade pickles; cheddar and goat cheese Dutch baby with roast thyme and rosemary; and Korean miso and scallion pancake with kimchi and soy dipping sauce. There are plenty of drinks on offer too, with a range of soft drinks, wines and beer. The cocktail list got you covered for classics like mimosas, Aperol spritzes, margaritas, espresso martinis and more. Plus, if you drop by from 5-7pm you can get any cocktail for just £7 as part of their happy hour deal.
Do brunch Mexican style at Adriana Cavita’s namesake Marylebone restaurant Cavita. Not only does the place look the part, with exposed bricks, earthy colours and plenty of cacti, but it delivers her take on traditional dishes, including chilaquiles, aguachile rojo and tacos de cochinita pibil. If it just ain’t brunch without some eggs and the huevos rancheros is a winner, with two fried eggs on tortillas covered with red and green salsa, smoky bacon and Oaxacan style beans. And you can really get stuck in with DIY tacos de asada; a huge plate of rump steak, chargrilled spring onions and nopales, radish and cucumber, arbol sauce, and tortillas for you to fold up and chow down on. For something sweet, finish up with pan de elote, a traditional Mexican cornbread served with honeycomb ice cream and cajeta. All of that with a round of spicy mezcalitas (made with Ojo de Dios Espadin, fresh lime, homemade sugar syrup & fresh jalapeno), is how to do the weekend right.
Bombay Bustle is taking its brunch to a new level by running it all weekend long. Weekend Chillies really does have something for everyone, with the menu featuring everything from pork sorpotel (pickled pulled pork, poached egg, white cheddar hollandaise & warm curry leaf brioche) and uttapam mutta roast (eggs, rice pancakes & tomato chutney) to Chettinad double fried chicken and chilli paneer to Bombay Bustle classics like dum lamb biryani and chicken tikka makhani – and that’s before you get onto the likes of gulab jamun tiramisu and saffron milk cake at the dessert station. If you have trouble narrowing it down (and you will because all the food here is fantastic), there’s also a set Bundle Brunch menu on offer. You’ll also be able to check out the capsule collection of table linen from Dandelion, the lifestyle label from Bombay Bustle’s founder Samyukta Nair, which is all about making memories around the table.
Stork
There aren’t many places you can get a Pan-African brunch in town but Stork in Mayfair is one of them. The fine-dining restaurant led by head chef Taalib Adanse and senior sous chef William JM Chilila takes inspo from across the the African continent and giving those flavours a modern spin. There are mix of new brunch plates and some existing dishes adapted from the main menu, like the excellent ras el hanout lamb beignets and the king prawns with avocado & scotch bonnet jam. If you’re in the mood for brekkie, you’ve got the likes of seasonal porridge, akara fried eggs with green chilli, Zambian pancakes and the Pan-African breakfast – a spin on the fry-up with spiced beans, beef sausage, plaintain and yam hash browns – to choose from. If you like sweet with your savoury, the crispy corn-fed chicken with fermented chilli, plaintain waffle and syrup for drizzling will be up your street. Be prepared to fork out for this brunch though, a cheap eat this ain’t.
