Market Cafe

A visit back to Market Cafe on Saturday to indulge on a late brunch after a pleasant midweek lunch. I’m afraid that it might not have gone down that well. Beautiful weather and bank holiday weekend, it was pretty much going to be packed. And, so it was but the crowd did not seem to be more than any other Saturday. That late afternoon, customers like us, were still walking in to ask if the kitchen was still serving lunch. At 14:00 we did expect a lunch menu but on weekends, brunch menu is served up to 16:00 hours. eggs florentine £8.00 – let’s start from the bottom. The muffins were adequately toasted, warm and soft. Spinach was well drained and did not leave the plate watery, topped with overcooked poached eggs (both of them to my disappointment) and a seriously buttery, gloppy hollandaise. It so buttery that I did not feel comfortable eating it but then I had an upset tummy so I was not sure if it was the eggs or the hollandaise sauce or both. Bad luck! ratatouille with poached egg £6.50 – the ratatouille was delicious and expected a runny egg yolk to give a creaminess to the dish. Like the eggs florentine, the poached egg was overcooked. No runny egg yolk but the dish was quite generous with olive oil. Water marks on the dishes did not make the dish look appealing and on the whole makes it look rather sloppish and unappealing. Friendly service did not helped make it better in this situation. Not too keen on this place anymore.

I decided to take my boyfriend here for brunch as a bit of a treat, especially as I'd heard good things about the place. To be honest, we had one of the worst meal experiences. My boyfriend ordered the full breakfast and a hot chocolate, I ordered the eggs royal. Out came our food after a suspiciously short wait…and it was obviously as to why. His full cooked breakfast was entirely pre-cooked and looked like it had been sitting under a grill or heat lamp for hours. It looked disgusting, really crusty and dry. I felt pretty sorry for him, because mine was fine (this was the only thing they got right). We were in a rush, so he ate it, but mid way through his food he had to get up and remind them that he had ordered a hot chocolate too. I'm not sure how they messed that one up, as there was about six of them hovering around the bar/coffee making area. Whilst we were there we got served by a total of FIVE different wait staff. The place was not busy, but they still managed to forget our drink order and serve a dreadful breakfast. This place is not cheap, the pre-cooked fry up was a £10 breakfast and was an absolute disappointment. I'm not even sure how you can get a cooked breakfast wrong, but they managed it! When we mentioned to one of the waitresses that we weren't happy with the breakfast, this was her response…"Er yeah…it's because we have such a high turnaround?" (no “sorry” or anything) – in a really arrogant, s***ty manner, making me feel like an idiot/bad for saying anything. She offered us a juice to make up for it. This excuse might have been slightly acceptable had the place been busy…but it most definitely was not! This placed is overpriced, the staff are rude and unhelpful, the food was a joke and I will never step foot in there again. I'll make sure all my friends know about it too.