A L I T T L E A V O C A D O N E V E R H U R T A N Y B O D Y
There’s no doubting the fact that brunch is one of life’s greatest simple pleasures.
By its very nature, it’s all about slowing down. It’s the meal that comes to the rescue when you couldn’t quite make it out of the door early enough to make breakfast, but are far too peckish to wait for lunch.
It’s for lingering over, and savouring, and ordering more dishes than is strictly necessary because hey! It’s two meals in one so why on earth not!
I stayed up in London with Tania a few nights ago, and together made plans to head out to brunch at Hally’s early the following morning.
But as is the way with these things, we stayed up so late into the night doing yoga in our pyjamas (I can’t quite remember how that came about, but it was fun!), drinking endless cups of tea, and talking about everything and nothing (97% of it in English, 2% in French, and 1% in my own made-up version of French that Tania kept having to remind me wasn’t quite correct…), and so neither of us was feeling especially bright eyed or bushy tailed when alarms went off at 8am…
It seemed that the Gods of Brunch were on our side though, because we hopped in a cab at quarter past eleven, sped over to the New King’s Road, and made it to Hally’s with five minutes to spare before sittings for brunch ended!
First came a round of juices and coffees- the former made from fresh blends of carrot, apple, cucumber, celery, and ginger juices, and the latter from Monmouth coffee beans.
Next, to the good stuff.
Was is to be a ‘full English’ or pancakes? Eggs benedict, or florentine?
We decided to share a couple of the menu’s greenest dishes between us- a wedge of avocado toast, and a plate of buttery eggs florentine. We both were toying between the same two dishes, you see, and sharing is caring don’t you know!
The toast came spread with a layer of tangy tomato chutney, and piled high with chunks of ripe avocado and rocket dressed with chilli and lemon juice.
The chutney was a new twist on avo toast to me, and such a great one! Definitely something I’ll be recreating at home…
The eggs florentine were pretty fantastic, too!
Buttery hollandaise, perfectly cooked eggs, and lovely irony spinach. In short- heaven on a slice of toast!
Tania and I lingered over our brunch, chit chatting and Instagramming to our hearts content.
We’d just begun to start eyeing up the baked goods on the counter at the front of the shop (our bellies were rumbling again, you see) when the manager suggested we might like to pop over to Little H, Hally’s little sister cafe across the road!
And seeing as I’m never one to turn down something sweet, and we were promised that Little H serve an array of baked treats, off we went!
Little H turned out to be just as cute as its older sister, and is well worth a visit.
We came away with a couple of ‘cookies and cream’ smoothies (delicious, and made from all natural ingredients!, and a raspberry and white chocolate brownie that, I promise hand on heart, turned out to be the very best brownie I’ve ever eaten.
All that, and we were done by half past one.
Three cheers for brunch! And now that it’s Sunday, is it time to do it all over again?
