Everything at Farm Girl – the nutritious brunch dishes, the casual, Aussie-inspired backdrop, the crowd of phone-happy tourists and wannabe Instagram models – is fresh, wholesome and oh so pretty. Case in point: matcha lattes arrived in shades of baby pinks and powder blues, sprinkled with dried flowers.
The food tasted as it looked: healthy. Take the icy, pleasingly tart açai bowl, or the slow-cooked chicken sandwich, which was both satisfying and nourishing. Surprisingly, the standout item was the Liquid Gold latte, which came with turmeric and astragalus, an ‘immune-system booster’. It was one of the best I’ve ever sampled – not too sweet and with a long, milky finish. (The cute French bulldog stencilled in cinnamon atop the sunshine-coloured foam didn’t hurt either.)
And yet, the health focus meant that most of the dishes weren’t exactly moreish, plus all the added extras (£2 for a poached egg, £2.50 for mushrooms and £3 for about eight clusters of granola) crank the bill up fast and furiously. But as the Hemsley sister lookalike next to me photographed her £4.20 Smurf-blue, organic almond milk latte, I remembered: we’re not really here for the food, are we?