Brunch at The Cookbook Cafe @ The Intercontinental Hotel on Park Lane, London.
Saturday 28 May from 12.30 to 15.30 (although we left at just after 16.00)
It started promisingly, £49 all you can eat and as much fizz as you can drink (service extra so budget £55).
The food was outstanding - a multitude of options to suit every taste:
Salads, sushi, breads and tapas style pickbits. A live egg and pancake cooking station from which I thought the Eggs Benedict were wonderful. Hot tasting plates of Asian duck skewers and sticky rice, poached salmon with potato puree and spinach, and tortellini with a cheese and mushroom sauce.
Quickly followed by waffles, chocolate sauce and ice cream, cheeses of every variety and a number of other delicate desserts, finished with coffee and petit fours.
So all in all fabulous food. However, there are two things I would look out for:
1. The Bellinis take forever to bring to your table and as you are only allowed one at a time, the 20 minute wait becomes a bit tedious and the 'all the fizz you can drink' becomes 'all the fizz you can drink that we can be bothered to bring you'. When the bellinis finally turned up I did ask the waitress if we could order another round now. She declined pointing out that we had to finish those ones first. When I replied politely that we had been waiting 20 minutes and by the time we finished these and waited for another 20 minutes, we would have had one drink in an hour. She apologised as they were busy and said she'd bring a bottle of fizz to keep us going. Nevertheless, she topped up half the table's drinks and disappeared leaving the rest of us dry.
2. The hot plates also take an enormous amount of time to turn up so order these early and don't stop eating the rest of the food while you wait. I can only imagine that the restaurant was rather understaffed (I only saw one waitress the entire day) but this does not excuse the long wait for food.
I will caveat the above two points with the fact that I was part of a group of 20 and so perhaps service would be quicker if you were in a smaller group but for good restaurants this really shouldn't make a difference and I strongly believe that if somewhere offers a deal of 'all you can eat/drink' slow service shouldn't overshadow what is essentially great food and a great idea.
Please note, if you do the Sunday brunch it is a slightly different menu.
My advice is to definitely try it but in a smaller group and you will enjoy, but be on the ball and get your orders in early.
