London, UK
In an otherwise not very lively street, The Table in Southwark is always bustling with a queue outside around weekend brunch time. It is designed and developed by the architects next door, Allies & Morrison, and draws a creative crowd probably because of this fact. I went with a group of five people on a rainy Sunday, and we waited for about 10 minutes outside before being seated in the simple, bright space. The menu shows that the restaurant is committed to sustainable sourcing and to the use of quality, British ingredients. We started off with some delicious smoothies, and went on to order quite a lot of food. I had the Sweetcorn Fritters with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. This was an interesting and filling alternative to my usual order of Eggs Benedict. The tomato compote and spinach were quite bland additions to this dish, but the sweetcorn fritters made up for it. I received an unpleasant surprise when I broke through to the yolk of the second poached egg, as there was some strange brown stuff in there. This was quite off-putting, and I avoided eating the eggs after that. The highlight of the meal was the waffles. I tried both the delicious blueberry version, and the even better coconut, maple syrup and marshmallows. These aren't big enough to form a full meal (even though the price isn't far from the other main brunch dishes) but they are definitely a must to share or eat on the side.The staff was nice enough to gives us a portion of Eggs Royale wrapped as take-away for someone who didn't make it out of bed on time, a service that they do not usually provide. All in all The Table serves up a decent brunch, where you can tell that the ingredients are fresh, but some of the flavours are lacking a bit of punch. I apologise for going into detail about this; but the weird stuff inside the egg yolk was enough for me to not want to return to this restaurant, even though the waffles might be worth reconsidering for.
