Image above: Going for the house special of the BERT – toasted sandwich w/ crispy bacon, fried egg, rocket, fresh tomato and aioli. [Sunday 19 December] | [View all photos]
With See Yun heading back up to her parents in Scotland for Christmas it was the perfect excuse for us to get together for a catch-up with Wendy and check out a new Lantana Cafe too.
Located not on the busy Charlotte Street but on the adjacent and quieter Charlotte Avenue it’s easy to miss if you didn’t know about it. And with seats for only 25 diners it’s very compact inside too. But fate was on our side and it wasn’t too long before we got a table to ourselves.
I must confess that I prefer smaller places where you’re all tightly packed in together. It’s that sense of diners filling in the space with their animated conversation, the belief that with fewer covers the kitchen can control what they produce better and serve up great-tasting food, the shared compressed experience that everyone gets. You just don’t get that in a cavernous restaurant.
True to form, the food at Lantana Cafe was perfect for our brunch – especially because simple food is so hard to execute well. My BERT (toasted sandwich w/ crispy bacon, fried egg, rocket, fresh tomato and aioli) was so good and the girls loved their breakfast of HG Walter’s pork and sage sausages with Lantana style baked beans, crumbled feta, sauteed spinach and sourdough toast.
Feeling particular ravenous that day, I even ordered a second plate much to the consternation of the girls and our waitress. She even got the chef to make me up a sausage sandwich even though it wasn’t on the menu – such good service!
So a definite recommendation to try this place out. They don’t take reservations so come early or come late to avoid the brunch-time queues.
Lantana Cafe | 13 Charlotte Place, London, W1T 1SN | Map | Nearest station: Goodge Street
