Breakfast #4 on the list
Heller's Kitchen on Salisbury Place
Originally reviewed on March 29th, 2015
His score: 4.2/6
My score: wouldn't talk you out of going but wouldn't recommend or return
He ate: American style pancakes with bacon and maple syrup (£8.95) with tea (£1.85)
I ate: full cooked breakfast (£9.95) which includes tea or an Americano, though you can get a latte or cappuccino for 60p extra
Total cost: £20.75
Our pros: lovely atmosphere and very bright with a skylight and reasonably tasty food.
Our Cons: extremely stingy with sugar sachets; no sauce offered with breakfast; expensive for what you get and service a little lacking at points.
Our experience: I'll start off by saying this place was better than Kilimanjaro Coffee but it wouldn't be hard to beat that.
We pre-booked a table for 12pm (don't get me started on clocks changing) and we battled through rain to complete our challenge! But we made it. We arrived, semi-soaked around 12pm and got seated at a little table.
We were a bit crammed in where we were and my cutlery on the table somehow seemed to be covered in brown sugar despite there being no brown sugar in sight. Nevertheless, I wiped my cutlery down and emptied the excess sugar onto Gary's coat (accidentally, promise) then we ordered.
They delivered the tea to our table and we both got nice big pots that looked like Mrs Potts from Beauty and the Beast but the kicker was they only gave us one sachet of sugar each which isn't even enough for one cup of tea so when the waitress bustled past again, Gary asked if we could have more sugar so she returned with...that's right, one more sachet each.We assumed we had time travelled back to WWII and sugar was being rationed once again because I would assume when someone politely requests "more sugar" you don't hand them the bare minimum, you give them a few sachets so they won't have to ask again!
The food seemed nice enough. Gary said his pancakes were very tasty and it was nice to get them with the syrup on the side so they weren't sickly sweet like the ones at City Café that arrive drowning in syrup. However, they were not particularly filling and for nearly £9 you're really getting ripped off for what you've ordered - you get two slices of bacon, a small pot of maple syrup and three thick but small pancakes.
Also, it came with potato gratin which was different but felt like eating a lump of cold mashed potato that'd been grilled a little bit so I wasn't particularly overwhelmed.
Service was polite but we felt ignored most of the time we were there and I had to approach the counter myself to request more sugar *again* and when the same waitress handed over just two piddly sachets of sugar again, I had to politely ask if we could have "a few" so she confusedly handed me more.I'm not sure why it was so confusing that someone drinking effectively two and a half cups of tea would need more than one sachet of sugar for them all....
We felt let down only due to the sugar sachet saga, the overpriced pancakes and the fact that the service lacked a little bit.
The waitresses didn't check back on us at all and kept bustling past us quickly without looking at us to see if we were ok.
The food was slow to be brought over to us and I really felt like they could save customers a lot of hassle by having sugar on the tables or maybe giving them more than one sachet each when they request more bloody sugar! Can you tell I have a chip on my shoulder about the sugar?
The décor was very nice though, there was lovely artwork on the walls and it was very well lit with a skylight so it was nice to sit there but originally Gary and I had planned to stay for a while after breakfast and have more tea while we wrote our notes for the review but the idea of having to ask the waitress 12 times for more sugar put us off so we paid, left and went to another café to compare notes.
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