Patisserie Valerie

https://www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk

Known as a purveyor of fine cakes and gateaux, they also do a full English breakfast. For £7.95 it's the classic mushroom, sausage, bacon, tomato, egg, beans combination. Eggs only poached or scrambled though.

Troby
"forgettable"
On arrival, the dining area appears a bit more 'low rent' than the exterior, with stuck down tables (I think), like a Wimpy Burger place, but brown decor. We were served by an excellent waitress, who took our drink orders, and took my various fussy requests in her stride. Coffee was pretty good.

Double expresso, hot water on the side

I chose the full English with scrambled egg, beans on the side. The breakfast arrived in reasonable time, but soon the disappointment set in - as feared, rubbery eggs! like a dry cloud, no clumping, hard to get onto a fork. Also, some heat issues - a cold plate means that after a short time you're left with tepid mushrooms etc. Overall the flavours weren't bad, nice enough bacon, warm crumby toast. The quantity was good. I had issues with the mushrooms, teeny tiny fungi that felt like they'd been boiled rather than fried. The sausage was fine, but forgettable.

Unfried breakfast. Good toast.

There's a possibility that nothing here is fried (suggested by the no fried egg option). Now, that's not a crime in itself, but a lot of skill, timing and good ingredients are required if nothing has been near the frying pan. I think the whole breakfast fell afoul of that. Even the service let us down towards the end as our waitress became overstretched with the other tables. Overall - there are much better breakfasts out there for a tenner eg Cote

• Food         2.5
• Value        2
• Service      4
• Ambience     2.5
• Coffee       3.5

Seefud
""
Firstly, the service. It started off quite promising, as the waitress was attentive and took our orders well. She didn't push back when Troby started customising either. But the place was initially quiet and I began to wonder how she would cope if she was stretched. Not perfectly as it turns out, she lost focus just as the four of us were finishing and wanted to pay.

I'd grabbed a take-away doughnut a couple of times from Patisserie Valerie but never sat in to eat anything. It exudes a certain class (for a bun shop) from the outside, but inside the seating area was a bit of a disappointment, and there was no real atmosphere. The coffee was okay, if a little smooth and mild.

I had suspected the food would be poor the day before when I saw the online menu and noted the lack of a fried egg. It's usually a sign there's no frying at all going on, probably just an oven/grill and microwave. I had scrambled egg and lo and behold, they were over-microwaved, crumbly and tasteless. The bacon was dried with no hit caramelisation, and sausage and tomato were very average. The tiny mushrooms were a disappointment too. The beans were beans and the toast was toast. That's about the best I can think to say. Oh no, wait, I thought they got the relative proportions of ingredients about right and overall the portion was good. WHOOOHOOOOOO!

• Food     2
• Value    2.5
• Service  3.5
• Ambience 2.5
• Coffee   2.5