Breakfast Nomination #5 - Patisserie Valerie on North Bridge

Nomination #5 - Patisserie Valerie on North Bridge

Nominated by My oldest, deary friend Ashley

Originally reviewed on August 2nd, 2015 

"I like my eggs to have a bit of randomness about them."

His score: 5.6/6
My score: tasty tasty

He ate: a blueberry muffin (£2.20), a full Scottish Breakfast (£7.95) and an English Breakfast tea (£2.75)
I ate: a pain au chocolat (£2.50), eggs Royale (essentially eggs Benedict with salmon) (£8.50) and also a tea (£2.75)
Total cost: £26.65

Our pros: friendly service despite busyness; really tasty food that tasted fresh and well cooked; they offer sit in or takeaway service; really pleasant atmosphere and I loved the décor (lots of framed vintage prints and gold framed mirrors); it was really nice ordering a sweet treat with breakfast and they have a huge selection of amazingly tasty things, I had trouble resisting the urge to order them all. 
Our Cons: really huge tea serving set for some reason so it took up quite a lot of the table; quite a long wait between getting the bill and the waitress collecting the payment; some quite high prices on things that was a little off-putting, and the service started off a little flustered due to the masses in the café though that did calm quite rapidly once we were seated. 

Our experience: Firstly, this is our most delayed review ever as it's already been over 24 hours since we even ate this breakfast but hey, I get lazy sometimes! Anyway, here it is. 

I think after a string of not so spectacular places, Patisserie Valerie definitely stood out. 
If I'm honest, I was a little put off initially as we arrived during the lunch rush and we were told there'd be a wait. I'm fine with waiting, however during this wait I was looking around at what sort of things were on offer and all I could see in the pastry case was about 75 different types of tarts (as it transpires, all the delicious cakes get put in the window to lure in greedy people such as myself) and they had packaged items in the take away fridge that were ridiculously expensive e.g. a cup of fruit salad for nearly £5. 

However, when we looked through the menus during our wait that the waitress who greeted us at the door had handed us, the prices for the breakfast items we planned to get were pretty much in line with or even cheaper than other cafés we'd been to previously so that was fine.

It was a really nice change taking advantage of the fact this place was a Patisserie and ordering ourselves something sweet before we got our breakfast. My pain au chocolat was toasted lightly so when it got to the table it was warm and the chocolate was deliciously gooey. 
Gary really enjoyed his blueberry muffin as well saying that the blueberries were very full and tasty, and didn't all congregate in the middle of the muffin as is prone to happen with other blueberry muffins. 

For the prices, we were both satisfied with our portions. I think mine seemed expensive initially but as it contains salmon, it's not really that surprising. 
Gary's breakfast had very full portions and tasted very good, though he said it could have done with some sauce, which we were not offered. Also he felt he was given too many mushrooms but that's just madness - how can you have TOO MANY mushrooms!? I would've helped him out no problem if he'd offered, sheesh!

Everything was beautifully presented though Gary felt the poached eggs were "too perfect", hence the random egg quote preceding our review. I personally thought they looked amazingly cylindrical so I was happy. 
The biggest let down was that when we were given the bill, our waitress (who had been very polite and friendly despite the lunch rush) said "There's no rush, just pay when you're ready" only, we were ready to pay right away but she disappeared to the other side of the café and was chatting to colleagues for over 10 minutes. I'm not the kind of person who is comfortable flagging down the staff or gesturing them over from 20 feet away because to me, it feels rude and I also thought that she would check back on us considering we had asked for the bill. 
Eventually Gary nodded her over and we paid. 

We still left a tip because despite that wait at the end, I couldn't fault the rest of her service. I'd definitely go back here - the food was delicious and I'd be keen to go back even to just get a cake and a tea.

My friend Ashley - who nominated this place, has bought us many different cakes at various points in her career with Patisserie Valerie and they're all so amazingly gooey and tasty and mmmm, I need to go back and eat some cake. 

A very nice treat after a bit of a breakfast hiatus; would definitely recommend. 

What’s next: Our next nomination is the Ship on the Shore, on the Shore (of course) nominated by our supervisor Strevs.