If we could level one compliment at Sargeant’s Mess – an airy café-restaurant presided over by former Ramsay protegé Mark Sargeant – it’s that it’s not quite as bad as the other £6-a-sarnie tourist-trap eateries you’ll find around the Tower of London. That’s damning with faint praise, obviously: this is still ‘Spoons level chow for an undiscerning crowd.
A haggis scotch egg was fine in an homogeneous bar snack way, though the accompanying chutney was rather synthetic. For mains, the bird in a buttermilk chicken burger was moist enough and well-fried, but the brioche bun was bone dry. A Cumberland sausage toad-in-the-hole was a modular mish-mash of mass-produced pudding and an oddly mealy sausage (placed rather than baked in), the greens supplying nothing but a bitter note. At least the honeycomb ice cream with an over-baked chocolate fondant was toothsome and satisfyingly chewy. In addition, our waitress (hi Alice!) was effusively lovely.
Let’s face it: no gourmand is ever going to make a beeline for a place so clearly (and understandably) catering for a famished tourist demographic. But that doesn’t excuse a vapid missed opportunity. Sargeant’s Mess is – sadly, inevitably – just that.