The Bruncheon Club

Going overground

2011-02-21T06:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Brunchophiles,

Bruncheon Club has been in hibernation for a while, and that's because we've been working on a new project - a full-blown cafe on Portobello Road!

It's called Lowry & Baker and although it's not a home restaurant, it still kind of feels like you're in someone's kitchen. We've got a little changing menu that might include poached eggs and avocado on toast for breakfast or home-made mackerel pate at lunch – with daily soups, home-baked cakes, Monmouth coffee and lots of teas. Do drop by and say hello!

You can find us Monday to Saturday, 8am-5pm at 339 Portobello Road, W10 5SA. Nearest tube is Ladbroke Grove.

And, by the way, Bruncheon Club is not dead. It's just very, very sleepy.

Maya and Gregg

Bruncheon at The Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race!

2010-03-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

What ho!

You've heard of the Boat Race? Okay, but have you heard of the Goat Race?

WHAT?
After last year's triumphant debut run, Spitalfields City Farm is once again racing two feisty goats (one named Oxford, one named Cambridge!) to raise much-needed cash for the farm. And The Bruncheon Club is delighted to announce that we will be popping up at the race!

WHEN?
Easter Saturday 3rd April 2010 - the same day as the Boat Race!

WHERE?
Spitalfields City Farm (not Hackney City Farm!), Buxton Street, E1 5AR. Just off Brick Lane.

WHAT WILL I EAT?
We have planned a special one-off goat-themed bruncheon menu, which will be...

- Oxford home-made lemonade vs Cambridge sparkling elderflower!
- Alphonso ManGO-AT (by which we mean mango) salad
- GOAT cheese and leek rarebit on home-made soda bread with farm-grown salad and home-made tomato chutney!
- Apple crumble cake with GOAT milk vanilla ice-cream!!
- Tea or Coffee with optional milk of the cow or GOAT

WHAT TIME?
There will be two bumper sittings for 18 people - one at 1pm and one at 3pm.

HOW MUCH?
The price is £20 per person with proceeds going to the much-deserving farm.

HOW DO I BOOK?
You can reserve seats at the 1pm sitting by emailing us (thebruncheonclub@gmail.com). We will be taking payment in advance by bank transfer.

Seats at the 3pm sitting will only be available on the day. We'll be taking bookings and payment in person from 2.30pm (when the doors officially open).

Bookings are first-come first-served, and no booking is confirmed until we have received payment. Thanks!

Really hope to see you there!

BC x

Last year's loser!

The week in brunch

2010-03-11T03:06:00.000-08:00

Another super BC on Saturday, with special guests Horton Jupiter and girlfriend Rachel - the forces behind London's original home restaurant The Secret Ingredient.

One of our other stellar guests was returning for his second BC, generously bringing us a cut of steak that he'd told us about on his first visit. Thanks Simon! The cut is called the onglet - we'd show you a picture if we hadn't eaten it so damn fast! We did take these photos though...

Oven-bready

Stacking 'em up

The art of listening

2010-03-11T02:35:00.000-08:00

Resonance FM, London's arts radio station, sent an intrepid reporter to the last Bruncheon Club. The result is a 15-minute chinwag in the BC kitchen complete with authentic dishwashing, pan frying, guest-arriving hubbub. Real fans would listen through to the end.

Hackney Citizens

2010-03-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

Gregg wrote an article on home restaurants for the latest issue of The Hackney Citizen.

The article features an interview with Uyen of the wonderful Fernandez and Leluu. Maya recently made a visit to Fernandez and Leluu which was utterly delightful (barring the, er, 'tipsiness' of her friend towards the end of the night).

"The best I've ever tasted..."

2010-03-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

One of our knockout guests from the last BC has written about us on her blog 'Nanny and Kitty'. Nanny and Kitty are two friends who live too far apart and use the blog to keep in touch. Ah!
Read about Nanny's visit to BC here.

Bruncheon and on and on

2010-03-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

Saturday saw another splendid BC come and go. We finally remembered to take photos of the new menu. And here they are:

Egg in your face

Sunny delight

Still a superfood?

Bruncheon's back!

2010-02-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

Saturday saw the triumphant return of The Bruncheon Club. Along with new chairs, we spruced things up with a whole new menu. It consisted of... gently scrambled eggs on home-baked soda bread with a rocket salad; grilled pink grapefruit with brown sugar; blueberry pancake stack with maple syrup, tea/coffee and bucks fizz! Yuuuuuuum!

Maybe it was the champagne, but all the guests were particularly sparkly. It goes down as one of our favourite BCs ever.

We got up early to bake two loaves of soda bread using this recipe from fellow Hackney blogger The Redundancy Cookbook. It was bread easy!

Saturday was also the first outing for the tea set we got for Christmas from Maya's sister. (Thanks sis!) It's pictured here with our friendly lounge giraffe in the background.

For your sitting pleasure...

2010-02-24T07:22:00.000-08:00

Upon awaking from BC's little winter hibernation, we realised we were a couple of chairs down. So we cycled down to Bethnal Green and discovered a second-hand furniture wonderland under the railway arches. We picked up a pair of these adorable chairs and cycled them home.

In order to seem indifferent when haggling over the price of the chairs, we played it cool and went for a cuppa at a cafe in a neighbouring arch. What we found was a delightful mixture of hairdressers-cum-gallery-cum-vintage clothes shop-cum-cafe, 10 Gales. Our pot of tea for two came with two Custard Creams and two Malted Milks! Score! And our ice cool bargaining bagged us a third off the price of the chairs.

Festive Bruncheon

2009-12-18T09:14:00.000-08:00

Last BC was the last BC of the year. We spun some Rockabilly Xmas hits and brought out the mince pies and cream. We mixed things up even more with a new starter: grilled grapefruit with brown sugar. Most excitingly, we had our first bruncheon baby! For the Christmas BC too! There was room at our inn!

Gregg "entertains" with the remains of the grapefruit.

Bruncheon baby covered in some non-BC baby snacks (too young for bloody mary).

Maya and The Guardian sitting in a tree...

2009-12-18T08:52:00.001-08:00

In an effort to plug our recent "Bid for Bruncheon" campaign, Maya sold her ass to The Guardian. You can read all about the love affair here.

Hackney Podcast

2009-12-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

The avid reader of our blog may recall that a few months ago The Hackney Podcast stopped by The Bruncheon Club. Well, the episode is now available. You can listen to the whole podcast here, OR you could just listen to the highlights (ie. us!) below:

BID FOR BRUNCHEON!!

2009-11-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Bruncheon Lovers,

You might think this a bit maverick, but we have decided to auction places for the next Bruncheon Club on eBay!

The date is SUNDAY 6th DECEMBER, sittings at 11am and 2pm.

We are selling tickets in pairs. Search "Bruncheon Club" on eBay.co.uk, or try this link, choose 11am or 2pm, and get bidding!! You won't just be winning yourself a lovely bruncheon eggs-perience, you'll also be raising money for charity.... as we'll be giving a third of the final sale prices to SPITALFIELDS CITY FARM, who supply our duck eggs!

This renegade decision came about because our long mailing list and limited spaces meant that we were booked up before most people had even checked their emails.

The sales all end THIS Sunday night (29th November) just before 10.30pm. Don't miss out!

Hope to see you soon!

Maya and Gregg x

Who Houblon?

2009-11-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

Last BC was rather eventful. We had our first ever no-shows! Not even a rubbish excuse via text. They are sooooooooo blacklisted! Luckily, we have our local reserve army who stepped into the breach at the last minute. Well done troops!

Another B-day at BC! The birthday boy's kind fiancee had baked a red velvet cake! We were lucky enough to tuck into and it tasted of life-long commitment.

Finally, some photographic evidence of our not-so-new new starter. Baked peaches with all the good shizzle drizzled on top.

In answer to the question "Who Houblon?"... Sir John Houblon was the first governer of the Bank of England in 1694. And more importantly, he's on our first ever fiddy pound note!!

Away days!

2009-11-22T14:59:00.000-08:00

BC went on a couple of team building exercises recently. First up was The Hidden Rooms in Old Street. SO MUCH CAKE we had to smuggle some home (then scoff it all later.)

Next up was the Mudchute City Farm Halloween Feast. You know how we love a city farm! Frighteningly good food!

Heart Breakers

2009-11-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

The last blog post was about The Great Date Guide. And now we prepare you for heart break. The charming Broken Hearts have written about their bruncheon eggsperience here.

Courting attention!

2009-10-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

We're listed in TheGreatDateGuide.com. Woo! BC: "For the morning after the night before."

Saturday Bruncheon!

2009-10-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

The 17th October was our first ever Saturday Bruncheon. It's very similar to a Sunday Bruncheon. But there was another first: a Bruncheon guest's birthday! We only found out on the day but had just enough time to fetch a candle to stick in a croissant.

Having a bloody merry time!!

Snooping from behind the curtain

"Happy birthday to you!"

"Toothsome" [ˈtuːθsəm] adj 1. of delicious or appetizing appearance, flavour or smell

2009-10-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

Not that we while away our hours Googling ourselves or anything, but we did happen to stumble across this blog review from 'The Hearing Trumpet'. They blog about us, we blog about them! The world goes round.

LONDON'S BEST BREAKFASTS!!!!!

2009-10-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

When Time Out arrived through the door last week, we were like "oh breakfasts. We like breakfasts." So we flicked through, read about some of the great breakfasts on offer, got to the bottom of the St John Bread & Wine entry only to spot none other than The Bruncheon Club!!! "WTF?!" said Gregg.

Time Out have killed two birds with one stone by using the same words to give us a 4-star review here!

Octoberuncheon!

2009-10-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was the first ever indoor Bruncheon Club! Maya's mum made us a beautiful curtain to partition the kitchen from the living room - so that any eggy kitchen tantrums would be hidden from our guests! (Hi mum! Happy birthday!!) We also debuted our new seasonal starter: baked peaches with honey, ginger and pecan topped with a dollop of greek yoghurt. Mmmm!

Welcome to the new dining area!

Guests start to arrive.

So long to the old dining area!

People all over the world, join hands...

2009-10-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Gregg went LIVE on Irish radio station 4fm on Wednesday. On the Lunchtime with Dave Harvey show. Tune in below!

We highly recommend listening right to the end to admire how Dave signs off the chat with Gregg and fades into Love Train by the O'Jays. Hop onboard, next stop Bruncheon Club!

"Perfectly-formed..." - Time Out

2009-10-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Time Out have included us in their list of London's underground restaurants. They say you don't have to book a seat - which is a nice idea, but utter nonsense.

Restaurant in our Living Room

2009-10-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

To go with the new TV series Restaurant in our Living Room, Virgin 1 have launched an interactive map where diners, hosts and sellers can all come together and plot themselves. BC is now plotted - if you can spot us. We're buried beneath a sea of diners.

Find Wally here.

BC on the BBC

2009-09-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

BC are featured in an article on the BBC news online as part of a piece on underground restaurants. Licence-fee money well spent! You can read the article by clicking on the word 'here' here: here.

"Utterly scrumptious" - The London Foodie

2009-09-27T14:29:00.001-07:00

One charming guest from the last BC has written an extremely flattering review on his mouth-watering blog. You can read all about the healing powers of Bruncheon Club by clicking here.

The September Issue

2009-09-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't you know it... last BC in late September was sunny again! The sun is good to Bruncheon Club. For the first sitting we welcomed the lovely Hackney Podcast who were here to record for their October edition. We'll be sure to let you know when it drops.

Nom nom nom

Ker-ching!

Bruncheon-on-Sea

2009-09-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

BC went on tour last weekend to sunny Gower, South Wales and popped up in a Port Eynon kitchen. We revived 3 sittings of weary revellers with our usual panache.

Tucking in!

Vegging out!

BC out.

"Delectable" - Newsweek

2009-09-19T05:11:00.000-07:00

BC is featured in the current issue of Newsweek! Read all about it!

Bank Holiday Bruncheon

2009-09-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

The last BC in August was another treat. The sun shone, the guests shone. The only difference was that it was on a Monday! Two lovely guests even brought us champagne! Hurrah!

"Whoever cooked the eggs should be outted as a professional chef"

2009-08-24T05:58:00.001-07:00

One of our guests at the last BC was food blogger Fat Les a.k.a 'Bellaphon' (meaning beautiful sound, in case you were wondering about the gramophone). Such is his commitment to new taste sensations, that he walked to our E8 garden all the way from Notting Hill. It took him over 2 hours! See what he had to say, along with his awesome photos, here.

BC digest

2009-08-24T05:57:00.002-07:00

Sunday 16th August was slick. We were operating with balletic grace! Lovely eggs, lovely people, you get the picture. And here are some actual pictures:

Poaching a dozen eggs is no yolk!

One day, all this could be yours...

Meet our egg suppliers

2009-08-24T05:57:00.001-07:00

The other day we dropped in to spend a little quality time with the behind-the-scenes stars of BC. They were mostly chillin' in the pond. Keep up the good work lay-dees!

In-Shedible!

2009-08-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago BC went on a field trip to The Shed. We had the dope 6-course August menu. Every course was delicious. We gorged on enough Colston Basset Stilton to turn ourselves blue. We even got packed off with off-cuts from the white chocolate croissant pudding! All for just 20 British!

Berry good!

2009-08-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday's BC saw us harvest over 7lbs of elderberries! They're currently at rest in the freezer whilst we dream up what to make with them. We're thinking of home-made French toast topped with elderberry compote.

If you have any more ideas, please do drop us a line at thebruncheonclub@gmail.com.

My mate Marmite!

2009-08-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

MsMarmiteLover, the doyenne of all things secret and foody, came along to the second sitting on Sunday. We were delighted to offer her our mega-pot of Marmite! She's posted a lovely write-up on her blog along with some brilliant photos. Check it!

MsMarmiteLover hosts The Underground Restaurant at her beautiful home in Kilburn. Go!

Bruncheon mop-up!

2009-08-11T05:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday 9th August was another stormer! The sun had his hat on again, we met some lovely people and our housemates hung out and harvested elderberries from the trees!

The first sitting enjoying drinks on the lawn.

Coffee, chat and papers.

Picking the elderberries!

Be a good egg!

2009-08-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

The awesome Spitalfields City Farm, who supply our duck eggs, have asked us to help raise awareness of the poor welfare suffered by hens kept in cages. We at BC only buy happy eggs and we advise you to be a good egg too. Check out the Compassion in World Farming site for more info.

The BC on Diesel Radio!

2009-08-01T04:33:00.000-07:00

Anyone listening to Diesel Radio this afternoon, would have heard the exquisite Broken Hearts talking about The Bruncheon Club! They even played Eggman by Beastie Boys for us!

You woke up in the morning with a peculiar feeling
You looked up and saw egg dripping from the ceiling

...amazing! Thanks Broken Hearts!

Broken Hearts by Rob Flowers

Two thumbs up!

2009-07-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

The discerning Malcolm Eggs has written a review of us on The London Review of Breakfasts. Here's a taster:

"It was one of the eggiest things I have ever seen: impossible amounts of the boldest possible yellowy-orangey yolk gushing out across the smoked salmon, then mingling gloriously with duck-egg-hollandaise, then quickly entering my mouth."

And you can read the full review here.

We have posters!

2009-07-30T04:41:00.000-07:00

Check out these posters designed by the creative genius that is Becky Barnicoat. These are going up at a new underground restaurant called The Shed. Big up.

Feel free to print them out and stick them on walls.

The Times Top Ten Secret Restaurants!

2009-07-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

We made it into The Times' list of the Top Ten Secret Restaurants in London! Okay, so they spelled Gregg's name wrong (it's supposed to have the word EGG in it!), but still.

You can read the full article here.

Join the Club!

2009-07-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

The next Bruncheon Club is going to be on Sunday 9th August.

Maya and Gregg, your hosts, will nurse you to full health with great food, music, newspapers and conversation. Maybe even a game of boules!

There are two sittings: 11am and 2pm.

Here's the full menu (subject to changes):

Bloody Mary

Simple Seasonal Fruit

Eggs Royale (2 poached duck eggs on English muffins with smoked salmon* and homemade Hollandaise)

Warm Croissant with butter & jam

Tea or Coffee

*vegetarian option available

The suggested donation is £12.

The Bruncheon Club is on Amhurst Road, E8.

Email us at thebruncheonclub@gmail.com to join us!

Post-Bruncheon Analysis

2009-07-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

Sunday 5th July went down a treat! We certainly had lots of fun. The sun was shining and we all ended up playing boules after a hearty bruncheon in the garden.

Here's some snaps...

Our eggs royale with our home-made duck egg hollandaise sauce. Yum.

A guest kicking back at the first sitting with a cuppa and a croissant. Yum.

Guests at the second sitting indulge in some light post-bruncheon eggsercise.

Duck eggs from the mighty Spitalfields City Farm!

2009-07-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

We'd like to say a big thank you to all the lovely people at Spitalfields City Farm for supplying us with their happy scrumptious duck eggs! If you haven't visited the farm, you should! It's great.

Welcome to the Club!

2009-06-24T11:29:00.001-07:00

Maya and Gregg welcome you to The Bruncheon Club.

Sunday 5th July
First sitting 11am
Second sitting 2pm

For a suggested donation of £12, we hand prepare for you a three course brunch eggs-travangza featuring a Bloody Mary upon arrival, seasonal fruit and our delectable home-made hollandaise!

Relax at leisure with newspapers, music, people and food. All in the comforts of our E8 garden.*

For more information and to reserve your place at the next sitting of The Bruncheon Club on Sunday July 5th, please email thebruncheonclub@gmail.com.

*Or our front room if it's raining.