Bad Brunch @ The Ozone

This is going to be a very short and not-so-sweet post about Ozone, the newish coffee and brunch spot close to Old Street and just around the corner from the new Salvation Jane outlet.
To say we were disappointed with the kitchen is a bit of an understatement, the food that eventually came to was ok, I mean nothing brilliant and nothing that a bit of salt wouldn’t have improved a hell of a lot, but it is more the way the kitchen was functioning or not that given Sunday afternoon.

I like the look of Ozone, all post industrial and the smell of coffee is intoxicating. I also love the seats around the open kitchen so you can see what is going in the cauldron of fire.

So I was pretty happy that we got to see at them. I miss working in kitchens, I miss the buzz of when that check comes up on the machine and the instant panic to get that dish out as soon as possible, I miss the fun I used to have that I’ve not found since. I also miss some of my ex colleagues. Good times, but sadly my body cannot do 16 hour days two or three times on the trot anymore sadly.

The danger of having an open kitchen is that you can see how well or in Ozone’s case, how badly they are run.

We ordered a couple of coffee’s and a steak sandwich and the bangers and mash, which looked really good after seeing them go off the pass.

20 minutes passed and still no food, coffees were finished and we waited, 10 minutes later we were informed that there was no more mash left and we had to order something else.

30 minutes before they even began our order, I’m sorry but my old chefs would have shoved a pan up my arse if it would had taken more than 10 minutes to get an order out. One chef used to scream at us if it was more than 5.
This I noticed in how badly the kitchen was running, instead of multi tasking they were more or less doing one dish at a time. 3 of them going as slow as a Lada full of elephants going uphill. We should have go the bill and left, but we thought they would rush through our order and we’d get it in pretty quick time. Sadly no. We waited another 40 minutes for our order, incredible.

My steak sandwich had not been seasoned and was lacking any real flavour, plus the underside of the sandwich was soggy and after a while it fell apart in my hands.

The basked eggs with mince and cheese was really good, the dish served in a small pot with a few slices of sourdough bread. The meat was moist and the cheese added a lovely oozy umaniness about it.

This was the first restaurant that I have not left a tip, which shows how unimpressed I was with my experience at Ozone. As a gesture of goodwill they gave us a couple of cards for free coffee, but I haven’t been back to claim, instead I’ve detoured to Salvation Jane on the occasions I’ve been close by.