Bison & Bird – Clapham

I have walked and driven past this place many times and having checked out their website and brunch menu, I thought it would be a good place to go for a Sunday morning fry up. We turned up at about 11am and the bar area was pretty busy – it was Australia day. People supping pints of fosters with kangaroos on their heads wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but we were in Clapham so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Apart from the fact the lights were all on, it felt like a Walkabout at 8pm on a Friday night!

Before I review the breakfast itself, I will take some time to tell you about the service, as unfortunately it wasn’t very good. Firstly, having sat down and looked through the menu and waited a few minutes we thought, it must be an order at the bar kind of place. That is no problem and we went to order, only to be told it was table service and were made to wait another 5 minutes or so before the waitress took our order. We were a party of 5 but after a good 20 minutes of waiting only 4 breakfasts arrived. This is a real pet hate of mine, the order hadn’t gone wrong and the on plate arrived 3-4 minutes later, but it really disrupts the flow of the meal. Another faux pas was clearing away the plates before everyone was finished.

And so onto the food; for £6.95 you get 2 sausages, bacon, 2 fried eggs, beans, grilled tomato and toast served on an unnecessarily giant plate. The main problem was it was served cold! The bacon and toast were stone cold and the beans and sausage were lukewarm at best. The toast came with no butter and despite asking for some, we didn't get any. On the plus side the eggs were OK! The sausages really weren't great, my friend had a big lump of gristle (the size of a 20 pence piece). Whilst the rest of the ingredients used were OK, they certainly aren't going to win any awards.

Whilst the loud party atmosphere can be put down to a “special event”, the fact the fry-up was made up of pretty poor ingredients and was served cold means this was a really disappointing full English.

The Verdict
Go out of your way to avoid. A cold fry-up with poor service and poor ingredients.

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