City Matters Edition 034

CITYMATTERS.LONDON 24 - 30 May 2017 | Page 11
Food Matters
BAD EGG’S FAMOUS BRUNCHES ARE BACK AND EVEN BETTER THAN EVER
TOP of the
BOTTOM
baked eggs, tacos, ribs, wings, burgers, plus
a load of Asian-inspired slaws, sides and
salads. The type of food your arteries will scold
you for but it’s so worth the spanking.
Central to this offering remains weekend
brunch, a curated offering of the most popular
egg-based dishes on the all-day menu, from
which diners can make their choice of two per
person.
Stick with unlimited coffee, freshly squeezed
OJ or soft drinks, or upgrade to bottomless
so bad but so good:
is the ethos at Bad Egg
THE London dining scene is famously fickle.
Restaurants are seasonal affairs, trendy
pop-ups are here one day, down south the next,
and our insatiable hunger for the ‘Next Big
Thing’ has made standing reservations at old
faithfuls a thing of the past.
So when Moorgate all-day diner Bad Egg
quietly closed its doors last October to rebrand
as barbecue joint Little Smoke, owners Noble
Inns probably assumed their customers would
shrug, sigh and move on to the next, with
LET’S DO...
MARKET VALUE / Sourced Market
The Barbican’s Waitrose could be up for some serious
competition from independent deli-style eatery Sourced
Market, which opened its fourth site below the Citadines
Hotel on Goswell Road last week. The open layout showcases
a huge range of artisanal food producers, with room
to dine in-store or al-fresco. Expect cured meats from
Borough Market favourite Cannon & Cannon, honey from
Bermondsey Street Bees, Origin coffee, plus breakfast, lunch
and dinner options fresh from the Sourced kitchen.
7-21 Goswell Road EC1M 7AH
BEIJING STREET FOOD / Mama Lan
The first City outpost of this Brixton-born Chinese
chain brings with it authentic dumplings made in-house,
noodle soups, and street snacks. Founder Ning Ma has
based many of her recipes on those of her grandfather
and mother, who used to run a dumpling and snack stall
in a Beijing Street market – hence the name. The menu
has grown to include fresh noodle soups served in slowcooked
house broths, cold noodle salads, steamed buns
and rice dishes, but make sure you save room for hero
snacks such as prawn and water chestnut dumplings and
spicy chicken wings.
Unit 9, Avant Garde E1 6LD
die-hard fans able to get their fill at the weekend
pop-up.
Not so, in the case of this City favourite, for
less than six months down the track demand
for Bad Egg’s Tex-Mex diner-style brunches
grew so strong (and waiting lists for weekend
bookings so long) that they had no choice but
to extinguish Little Smoke and bring back the
Bad, full-time.
It means the return of executive chef Neil
Rankin’s wonderfully dirty all-day menu of
NATIONAL BARBECUE WEEK
What better way to mark the official start of summer
(hear that, Mother Nature?) than with a celebration
of the season’s best method of grilling. To celebrate
National Barbecue Week (29 May until 4 June), D&D
London’s Thames-side enclave of restaurants at Butlers
Wharf will be putting on a series of limited edition
barbecue menus to be enjoyed on dining terraces.
Chow down on Onglet steak with chimichurri at
Blueprint Café, a 400g smoked Gloucester Old Spot
pork chop at Butler’s Wharf Chop House, and seafood
and vegetable barbecue skewers at Cantina del Ponte,
and pray for sun.
Special menus available at Blueprint Café, Butler’s
Wharf Chop House, Cantina del Ponte and Le Pont
de la Tour.
Bloody Marys, prosecco and mimosas for
your two-hour timeslot, which, judging by the
general raucousness from neighbouring groups
of revellers, most people opt for.
And this is where Bad Egg rises to the top of
the Capital’s arguably oversaturated bottomless
brunch market. Diners demanding the volume
from their £35 often results in a decline in
service standards; whether staff are simply run
off their feet refilling drinks at twice or three
times the usual standard or rightly fed up with
slurred cries of “another one, sir!”
But neither was the case at 5pm on a Saturday
afternoon at Bad Egg, where the party was in
full swing and the staff were having just as much
fun as the birthday girls and boys, all the while
weaving between tables to take orders and top
up tipples with ease.
It’s a far smoother operation than the one we
saw on a visit to the restaurant in its infancy
back in 2015 and now matches the quality of the
food coming out of the kitchen.
Breakfast tacos are surprisingly flavourpacked
for what is essentially scrambled eggs in
a tortilla topped with avocado, with a smokey
chipotle and punchy salsa working wonders.
Reservation
Spices and sauces are again the heroes of the
chilaquiles, a sort of pimped out nachos topped
with chipotle, guacamole, peppers, goat’s curd,
jalapeños and a fried egg.
Pulled pork, beans and kimchi on sourdough
is not for the faint of heart or stomach, with a
rich salty sauce that could be a mite heavy for
this time of the day, but the macandchini – fried
balls of mac and cheese – were bang on; diner
food for the modern diner. Sign us up for that
standing reservation.
Bad Egg, City Point, 1 Ropemaker Street
EC2Y 9AW
menu full of favourites:
to help line the stomach