Last Saturday morning, having squeezed through the hordes of
Broadway market goers basking in this new concept called sun, we walked around
the corner to embrace the calmness of Bistrotheque. It is amusing coming off
Cambridge Heath Road into loads of warehouses and the only indication of
a restaurant being the other people walking around lost and stumbling in
mechanics and sketchy art galleries. Situated upstairs in an unmarked building, the Bistrotheque room
sits below a very light and airy white vaulted warehouse ceiling with frosted
windows. Assumedly the windows in place so the riff-raff still walking round these parts (everyone
knows the crazy guy with a high-vis jacket who stalks people by
Frockney Rebel) don’t start to lob empty cans of Skol at the candle lit windows.
The atmosphere is relaxed in a smart way – you don’t find
many places with white table cloths round these parts but the brunch menu was
very fairly priced, probably similar to most bigger dishes you will find on the
Broadway market stalls. I started with a Bloody Mary – and Bistro managed
to break a cardinal BM rule of doing a tiny bit too much by adding chipotle
spices – a BM should not taste like an Old El Passo fajita, however different
or unique that might make it. They also served a home made lemonade that was so sharp it could have been used to sear off ulcers, in a good way. However the duck hash with poached egg more than
made up for the smokey mary. The hash was crisp with a decent helping of
large chunks of duck, it came topped with a poached egg and was finished with a
mustard sauce, the only tiny let down of the dish being this slightly favourless, tepid sauce. It should have also come with mushrooms, but given that I deplore
fungus I opted to forgo it. Even without this the dish was a very tasty
breakfast, not dissimilar to the Duck and Waffle, except a billion times cheaper.
My girlfriend opted for a blueberry pancakes with mascarpone. These were huge, frisbee
sized pancakes which upgraded the richness of cream with the richness of a
creamy cheese, well played.
The restaurant service is smart, all ipads and table cloth scraping
but it is a pleasant place and definitely worth a visit with the evening menu
looking pretty special. It isn’t cheap, but this is definitely somewhere to go
when you have won some money or the parents are paying or you are planning on
proposing to your mistress or something.
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