Brunch @ Etcetera

Between Dalston Junction and Stoke Newington there are have been an astonishing amount of new cafes, restaurants, bars an hipster hangouts opening up.

These new places are bringing a bit of new life into an otherwise Turkish heavy street, which I’m fine with but it’s always good to have a bit of choice.

I’ve walked past Etcetera many a time over the last few months and kept meaning to wander in and have a bite to eat and see how it is, as the music playing inside wafting onto the street has always been very good.

A non descript Sunday morning after returning from China we found ourselves wandering down the High Street, still pining for Yunnan and Shangri La.

This given Sunday, Etcetera was playing some good tunes, a bit of Janis and Jimi were coming out over the airwaves.

The brunch menu is not as egg heavy as I was thinking it would have been, but there were plenty of eggy delights to be had.

Surprisingly they also had black pudding and apples as well, which I haven’t seen on brunch menus for a while. It used to be something that was a regular mid week supper years ago. No idea why it isn’t anymore.

Our tattoo laden young waitress took our order of Eggs Benedict and Black Pudding, Egg and Apple.

I am looking forward to 30 years from now when all these sweet young girls begin to have wrinkly sagging skin and their over tattoo’d bodies are looking like they’ve let a 5 year old has been let loose with ink on them. A funny thought for the future, but enjoying the Suicide Blondes now.

After a while listening to the funky vibes and watching the ooh so funny folk wandering past the window and still pining for China. Why did we have to come back.

I was a little bemused when our plates arrived, I’d never seen such large pieces of ham on a Benedict before. But hey these are not traditionalist times, so let’s go with the flow.

Sadly something’s should never be messed around with. The ham was still fridge cold, which I fucking hate. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to get the ham out when the order comes through.

The Hollandaise was under seasoned and lacked that tang that it always should have, thankfully the yolks were still runny. That would have been a crime.

The black pudding was really good, but everything else about the dish was wrong. The apples were so sweet that it should have been in a crumble not on a savoury brunch plate. A very disappointing brunch, but at least the coffee was good, the music funky and the waitresses were pretty and tatoo’d up.

I’ve been pondering since this meal if we will return, it’s unlikely as well the food just wasn’t very good. It’s not Caravan that’s for sure.