The Island is known for its breakfast. The restaurant offers an extensive hot and cold dish menu, with offers that allow you to choose one of each for £24 or two cold and one hot for £28. This includes pastries, muffins, toast, juice, tea/coffee/hot chocolate. Sensing a bit of a bargain, we chose the 2-course spread.
Sadly, the visit was instantly marred by the notable absence of the lobster club sandwich, which was the main reason we were there. Harrumph. Upon asking why, the waiter professed ignorance. Perhaps it was dropped, he suggested, because not enough people ordered it? I hardly think so. But enough regrets - who could be churlish when the sun is out?
The cold dishes all came in starter portions and martini glasses – granola, fruit salad with berries, sheep’s milk yoghurt with honey and blueberries. Presumably other options, which include a pancake stack, do not. The salad was fine - stolidly middle of the road fruit, a couple of berries, melon balls and orange, but no exotica.
After the starters, the bread. The promised conucopia of a
"bread basket" turned out to be a single shot at choosing from a tray filled with
miniature pastries, but the waitress was happy for us (and by us, I mean me) to choose more
than one. However, the toast which was listed had
to be asked for, as did the juices that we had ordered 15 minutes beforehand.
Surprisingly inattentive, considering we were the sole diners for the entire duration
of the meal.
For my main course I went straight (after I'd come shakily out of post-lobster-absence mourning) for the most expensive hot dish of steak with fried potatoes and roasted vine tomatoes. This I sadly forgot to photograph. The minute steak was nicely chargrilled and rare as I asked, the spinach and tomatoes complementing it well. The potatoes, however, had gone AWOL, joining the lobster club, the watermelon juice on the menu and the Marmite I asked for in the list of missing in action. No sauces were offered, though dipping toast in my companion’s hollandaise proved delicious.
We weren't entirely abandoned. Towards the end of the meal, the serving staff offered further juice and hot drinks but, having expected to have overeaten, the diminutive courses led me to raid the last slice from the toast rack as well as getting a hot chocolate.
It’s a wonderful location, but there’s a fair old bit to be ironed out. Everything was in children's portions, and the menu was full of holes. I would, in fact, have preferred a classic hotel breakfast, where in a children's party-like feeding frenzy, you end up with a plate piled with scrambled eggs, a fruit yoghurt, a slice of camembert and five types of Danish pastry. But if the sun’s shining, the birds are singing and I feel like a quiet slice of civilised brunching, I would certainly visit again.
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