A ‘bach’ is a small holiday home or beach hut, and a familiar part of everyday life in New Zealand. That’s great, obviously, but this is land-locked London, where a bike shed (let alone a second home) is a luxury. The nearest we’re getting is this Kiwi café on Broadway Market, serving up colourful dishes to a mixed crowd of weekend hangover survivors and yoga babes.
A typical Saturday queue was gracefully handled and the menu, with its inevitable sharing ethos, sounded promising. But when we were eventually sat, the corn fritters turned out to be pretty underwhelming – undersized and in need of more chilli jam. A french toast stack with treacle bacon and fried banana was better, but didn’t live up to the heady expectations of that description. The zingy juices hit the spot, though, and the excellent coffee comes from Allpress. There’s no brunch-time cocktails, but plenty of tasty counter cakes to linger over.
Luckily, the staff are lovely enough to lift those limp fritters, clearly trained at the school of ‘touch customers on the arm whenever possible’ (if that’s your thing). Let’s just hope they can up their brunch game a bit – then I’ll be bach.