Burnt Toast Cafe

Brunch

Brixton Village, 88, SW9 8PS

£

I have been foolishly drooling over Burnt Toast Café’s Instagram for a few months now, waking every Saturday morning and scrolling through their feed like a one of those Jaguar’s on the new Attenborough series scoping out its next meal. One day I decided enough was enough: time to make this dream a reality. So, out into the arctic Brixton winter me and four others went, with hungry eyes and even hungrier bellies.

BTC is located in the ever growing in popularly Brixton Village. I have mixed feelings about this space: there is an overwhelming amount of good food on offer, however, I must admit that it isn’t the most comfortable way of eating out. Firstly, you will need to queue for almost every single establishment: BTC doesn’t even have a website, let alone a booking system. Secondly, it’s cold enough to be considered ‘alfresco’, without the benefit of actually eating outside, which means it ends up feeling kind of like you’re dining in a shopping centre, or in the ‘outside’ seating contained within the O2 (eeesh!). Having said that, we queued for less than 5 minutes when we arrived bang on brunch rush hour at 11am on a Saturday morning, and were welcomed with some cosy blankets to heat our pins.

We ordered some Orange Juice (freshly squeezed, of course), a couple of Mocha’s, 3 portions of the Mexican Eggs (chorizo, guacamole, soft boiled egg, hollandaise on a muffin - £9) and one Full English (£11.5), with 3 sides of Hash Browns (£2 for 2). The others complained that their muffins seemed a little overdone, however, I like my bread crispy so didn’t find this an issue. The full English came with bread that you can toast (or burn) yourself – a sweet novelty, if a little inconvenient as you don’t know when your food will be arriving and therefore when to time your toast correctly.

The flavours of the Mexican breakfast were delicious, all my brunch favourites in one – smoky chorizo, creamy guacamole, indulgent hollandaise and perfectly soft-boiled eggs with some seriously runny yolks. The only downside, apart from maybe the ‘toast’ element, was that by the time you’d had your first bite, your meal was pretty much cold. This is obviously no fault of the restaurant and has to do with an issue of surroundings as mentioned earlier, but still added to the overall effect of the meal. Other additions of the meal would usually be service, but whilst it was fine here, it was also forgettable – neither here nor there.