Australian breakfast in London: Granger & Co

We miss breakfasts. Australians know how to do a bloody good brekkie. We take breakfast very seriously and expect both quality and quantity for our dollar (usually many dollars these days). If you live in Melbourne and are over 25 going out for breakfast is often the key social outing of the weekend. It is however, still a generation thing, as my parents see no point going out for their morning porridge and fried egg on toast. But they just don't get it. 

From poached eggs on sourdough, eggs benedict with smashed avo, corn fritters and crispy bacon, to a pancake stack with poached berries; we know how to do breakfast. 

We keep being hopeful in London that we'll find a good breakfast spot, and until last weekend, were feeling quite dismayed. The hollandaise was always out of a jar, the bacon never quite crispy enough, and the full English is always greasy. The Brits do a mean Sunday Lunch though, and so if you're looking for a British Roast on Sunday in Australia, you'll be disappointed. But why would you be, when you can have breakfast instead! 

So I said we were feeling dismayed until last weekend, which is when we finally went to Granger & Co in Notting Hill. Granger & Co is the London contingent of Aussie Bill Granger's very successful restaurant empire. We've walked past many times and scoffed at the long line waiting to get in. Well, we were the one's being scoffed at this past Saturday morning when we lined up with our good friends. And imagine the looks we got, we were taking a hefty pram in too!! But from the gloriously attractive head waiter supervising the line up (always a good opening bid, well done Bill) to the friendly service and heavenly butterscotch butter, Granger & Co did not disappoint. 

Well... it did a little... I was itching to order the Sweet Corn Fritters, but they were not able to make them Gluten Free for me, so I had to order a Full Aussie instead...

Which was very tasty with creamy and buttery eggs that were quite frankly the best eggs I've had in years, but I just knew that I was missing out on something special. For a start, it should have come with avocado and a hash brown if it were to be a FULL Aussie (well if we're going to go there, it should have come with steak too, but we're not branding cattle so perhaps we don't need quite that much). But I didn't have to look too far afield to see what I was missing out on.. it was shockingly apparent, looking at Mr M's plate....

I mean come on! Ricotta hotcakes with butterscotch butter, seriously! I couldn't try the hotcakes obviously, but I let the butterscotch butter melt over my bacon and boy was it delicious. I've made ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter before, but they didn't look anything like this!!!

I think I'm going to have to attempt them again, but this time with the added challenge of being Gluten Free!!

The large glass windows, proper Chai Latte, summery-yellow chairs, and the friendly, helpful and stunning wait-staff all made me miss home even more; but it made me also grateful that we can still have a taste of home (pun intended) in London, if we could only afford to eat there every weekend!!