Brunch at Balthazar

Oh, to be one of the beautiful people...

I’m not sure if Belfast has many places where the beautiful people gather.  If it does, I don’t gather with them.  But as it was our last day in London, we decided to experience a taste of the glamorous life before we returned home, and headed for Saturday brunch in Balthazar, Covent Garden.

Balthazar first opened in New York back in 1997, but now London has its very own branch of the French brasserie.  It opened last year in a blaze of hype, with dinner reservations booked weeks, if not months, in advance.  The hype didn’t appear entirely justified, though, with initial reviews not exactly glowing about the food on offer.  General consensus was that the brunch was much better than the dinner, and as my friend Julie and I couldn’t say no to chance to start drinking in the mornings, we were happy to oblige.

Not that our morning started off very well...we made the mistake of relying on an iPhone to direct us to our destination, with some trademarked Hilarious Consequences.  We realised we were in the wrong part of London entirely ten minutes before our booking, and had to flag down a black cab to get us where we needed to be.  Which turned out to be a ten minute walk from our hotel.  I told you, Hilarious Consequences.

All of which meant we turned up at Balthazar looking less fresh than when we had set out that morning – especially as we had been carting our suitcases around with us, having checked out of our hotel. But that was fine, yes?  Just a relaxed Saturday brunch, who needs to look good?

Ah, yes.  The beautiful people.  I don’t think we expected the Balthazar staff to be quite so beautiful.  Wafer thin bodies, perfectly styled hair, expertly applied make-up...still even if we didn’t get a chance to be beautiful, we got to feel pretty cool.  Balthazar was packed, with even more people piling in behind us.  Requests for brunch from people who hadn’t pre-booked were met with a quick “we can only fit you in for an hour”.  Julie and I, on the other hand, were led to our table by our beautiful waitress, looking at the one-hour brunchers with disdain for not being as damn cool as us.

The interior of the London Balthazar all terribly New York – which is odd, really, considering the interior the New York Balthazar is a copy of French style brasseries.  The tables were fairly small, with not a lot of space between us and our brunching neighbours, but that was fine.  Or at least it would have been fine, if only one of our neighbours hadn’t been an unspeakably pretty, size 0 woman tucking into a giant sticky bun that caused me to a gain 7lbs just looking at it.  Ah, I love the taste of resentment in the morning.

We momentarily felt a pang of panic strike us when we looked at the menu and realised the mimosas we had been planning on drinking were not listed.  Fortunately when we mentioned this to our waitress, she was happy to have two mimosas prepared for us anyway.  Clearly, tourists with burgeoning drinking problems do not faze the staff of Balthazar.

It was decided we would start the brunch with one vaguely healthy dish each.  I opted for the granola with fresh fruit and natural yoghurt, while Julie ordered the fruit salad.  My granola was fabulous, which is not a sentence I say often.  It had a lovely nutty taste to it, and with a generous helping of the yoghurt and plenty of berries, it would have been perfectly filling on its own.

Julie also enjoyed her fruit salad, which appeared to have been covered with a sort of syrup or honey glaze which was beautifully sweet and went well with the fruit.

Healthy options consumed, we then ruined our good intentions with some rapid weight gain in a basket– a basket of assorted breads and pastries.  Balthazar has its own bakery separate to the restaurant, so we had high expectations for this part of the meal.

Our basket contained slices of fresh, white bread which came with three different types of spread to go with them.  Although the chocolate spread mentioned on the menu didn’t seem to materialise, the jams and marmalade we did get more than made up for this.  We particularly loved the marmalade, which tasted like pure oranges turned into a spread, and which Julie felt sure was slightly alcohol-infused.

We also had some chocolate bread to try out, though neither of us was very impressed by it, even if we both liked the idea.  We moved on instead to our croissant, which was the lightest, fluffiest croissant either of us had ever eaten.  The pastry practically melted on our tongues.  The same could be said for the pain au chocolat we had next, although we did feel a little bit more chocolate wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Next in the basket was a giant Danish pastry, filled with plump raisins and covered in sticky glaze with sugary icing drizzled over it.  I would normally avoid Danish pastries as I find them too heavy to be enjoyable, but this too had Balthazar’s light pastry and left us feeling as virtuous as a Danish pastry the size of a man’s head can do.

We left our favourite pastry of all to the end – the almond croissant.  In retrospect, this did mean that by the time we came to eat it, we were almost entirely bread-based, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Not to worry, though, as the almond croissant was as gorgeous and light as everything that preceded it.  If I had to be very picky, I would say it could have done with a little bit more almond filling,  but considering I was ready to be rolled out of the restaurant this is a minor point.

When our bill arrived, we noticed it came attached to a Balthazar postcard – not wanting to start an argument in the restaurant over who got it to keep it, we asked our waiter if we could have another one.  He returned with a selection of postcards for the pair of us, which we thought was a nice touch.  Bloody tourists, eh?

People were still crowding into Balthazar as we left, so I would say that booking ahead is a must.  As we emerged blinking into the Covent Garden daylight, our sense of being cooler-than-thou immediately evaporated, leaving us feeling like the travel-worn, pastry-stuffed women we were.  Still, it had been nice while it lasted.

Did we buy anything that couldn’t be bought at your average Caffe Nero on a Saturday morning?  Well, apart from the cocktails, no.  And at just under £70 for the two of us, Balthazar will never been a cost-conscious option.  But if you want a brief taste of being cool along with your croissant – and not forgetting the socially approved morning drinking - it’s a good choice.