Bottomless Bellinis
Brunching is fast becoming one of my favourite things to do on a weekend. D&D seem to be excelling themselves at creating lovely lovely places in which to eat a selection of delicious brunch dishes whilst quaffing as many fizzy wine based drinks as humanly possible, and I for one am thrilled about it. Last weekend saw four hungry, prosecco hunting women descend on their latest outpost - South Place Hotel in the city - to take advantage of their very silly brunch offering, and I was looking forward to seeing how it differed from the brunch at New Street Grill. For £35 you can enjoy two courses of pretty fancy brunch and unlimited bellinis, mimosas, bloody marys or straight up prosecco in their Conran designed restaurant: amazing.
I started with the Yorkshire chorizo and duck egg on toast (pictured above) and several gallons of bellini, both of which were very good. The other girls had the Welsh rarebit and eggs either Benedicted or Royaled, and all reported back positively. I tried a bit of the rarebit and indeed it was yummy. We ate these as slowly as possible in order to maximise the bellini drinking, obviously.
For mains we all went for the steak, as we were conscious we had a day of alcohol ahead of us and wanted something to set it off a bit. For me, this was a mistake. I'm not a huge fan of steak for steak's sake, and I'd rather wait and pay through the nose to have a great piece of meat at somewhere like Hawksmoor (or MASH or Goodman's, but that's another post), rather than have an ok piece of rump steak. To be fair, the other girls loved their's and we all finished the lot, but I couldn't quiet the niggling feeling that I should have gone for the fish pie or kedgeree instead. I'm still regretting my choice. To console myself I switched to plain prosecco, and we were all well on our way by now. The staff are really good and kept us topped up throughout our binge without ever having to ask, so God only knows how much sparkly they get through every weekend.
We finished the brunch off by sharing the chocolate pot with salted caramel (divine) and if my memory serves me correctly, the baked cheesecake (probably also nice). The bill was under £40 each, and we'd been there for about three hours taking advantage of their misplaced prosecco generosity, so you really can't complain.
We topped and tailed our visit by taking in the view at SushiSamba over lychee martinis and strawberry Nina Fresas, and generally running amok with the sweetie jars and photo booth at Shoreditch House, which for me makes a near perfect Saturday.
Other bottomless brunch places on the hit list: Plateau, Ape & Bird and Bunga Bunga.