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Last Saturday, my boyfriend and I ventured over to brunch to Granger and Co, which is a small chain of restaurants located in London’s Clerkenwell (where we went), Chelsea, Notting Hill and King’s Cross respectively, serving Australian food from breakfast and dinner to freshly squeezed juices and signature cocktails. The restaurants are the brainchild of food writer Bill Granger who has written 11 (!) cookbooks and also has lots restaurants in his native Australia.
The brunch menu is divided into drinks (fresh juices, smoothies, hot drinks…), bakery items, fruits & grains and savoury foods such as egg dishes and bigger plates combining lots of different things. The prices are a bit above average, but the service was wonderful and the food super tasty, so I’d say it’s definitely worth it!
We visited the Clerkenwell branch quite early last Saturday – I had actually booked a table already at 10am! I’ve found that if I leave brunch too late I get so hungry before it’s even time to leave the house, which means I’ll have to have a breakfast at home too, which in turn sort of defeats the point… Another good thing about going earlier is that it’s a lot quieter – there were only a few other tables occupied when we arrived.
We started off by ordering drinks – tap water for me and a flat white for Jim. I really wanted to try one of their smoothies (the berry and banana one sounded especially lovely!) but I thought that would make me too full to enjoy my “main” so, in the end, I decided against it. I kind of regretted it in the end as they looked really good!
I went for one of the “big plates” which consisted of courgette fritters, a quinoa, barley and shredded kale salad, halloumi and a good serving of zhoug paste (consisting of coriander, green chilies and cloves). I wasn’t sure about the kale salad bit (I thought it sounded a bit too healthy..!) but I actually ended up loving it and the rest of dish too. The fresh salad went really well together with the salty halloumi, and I really enjoyed the zhoug paste too – I’ve never had anything like it before!
Jim opted for poached eggs and sourdough toast with added roasted tomatoes (£2.80 – a bit steep but very good) and an avocado salsa (£2.00 – so yummy!) which was very, very tasty too.
The poached eggs and avocado salsa – yum!
The roasted tomatoes…
And my dish, courgette fritters and halloumi with the shredded kale salad. I’d love to try and recreate this at home one day!
Granger and Co also have a lovely looking bakery section (don’t those swirl buns above look amazing?!) which I was dying to try too, but was just too full from all the lovely food I had already eaten. Definitely next time!
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