#granger&co

[elsabrito]

“Granger & Co”, Notting Hill, London, United Kingdom 

[charlottealexandrathings]

[richardsonrants]

Richardson Reviews: Breakfast at Granger & Co, Notting Hill

Queuing. Does anyone enjoy it? It is estimated that, by the time their life is over, the average person has spent 6 months of their life queueing. That's pretty worrying. That’s a sabbatical. Of course, sometimes you have to queue. For food. For prescriptions. For the latest Apple product so you have something to look at whilst queuing. I mean, these things are essential.

But people queuing for restaurants? What is this? The dark ages? Ever since the invention of the telephone and then the Internet, you've been able to book things in advance through a phone line. Why would anyone, especially in a country where you can guarantee the weather will be shit 90% of the time, think that queuing outside a restaurant is a good idea. I mean, people queue outside nightclubs and that's bad enough.

With this in mind what does Bill Granger, proprietor of Granger & Co, think he's running here? Ministry of fucking sound? Well obviously not because the long line of people I see on Saturday and Sunday mornings, come rain, wind or snow, waiting for the privilege of paying a fuck ton of cash for breakfast, are pretty docile. No frozen jaws, dinner plate pupils or chewed cheeks with this lot. It's more like a well heeled line for the job centre. (If you've ever queued for Granger & Co then I'll probably need to explain what a job centre is.)

It's mainly solemn looking guys and their excited looking girlfriends. The girls all excited about the food and the experience of getting into a 'scene' restaurant and the guys lamenting their very existence, missing Football AM, wishing they were at home but knowing that if they ever want to have sex again, they'll need to stand in line. The expressions are reminiscent of a Khmaer Rouge holiday brochure.

Granger & Co (I think the 'co' is in reference to some company in the Cayman Islands where all the profits are shunted through), is very nice inside. Or at least it would be if it wasn't so full all the time. Hell is other people, isn't it? The waiting staff always apologise for any delay due to them being so busy. Here's a note Bill, if you're reading this in-between counting the huge piles of cash your establishment generates, if your staff are continually having to apologise for being busy, you are not busy, you are either understaffed or over capacity. Cheap or incompetent.

It’s worth pointing out that dining at Granger & Co in the evening is a much nicer, more subdued affair. Unlike the morning to lunchtime Deutsch Bank cum Mumsnet crèche nightmare.

But I went in the morning. I ordered the 'Full Aussie Breakfast', half expecting it to come with a can of Fosters and a head butt or something, but it turns out to be the same as a Full English breakfast. Granger, who I have only ever heard about when my Mother eulogises about his TV appearances, is Australian so that's probably why. Must have taken a while to come up with that one.

Someone once told me, before I'd been, that the Eggs at Grangers are "divine". I'm not making this up, it actually happened. I think I just walked off. Anyway, turns out the eggs are pretty good. Not sure how he achieves the thick consistency but there must be some willy wonka esque secret ingredient or something. Everything else - the bacon, the stingily meagre two sausages (cunningly called chipolatas like that's a deliberate thing rather than a cost saving exercise) - tastes like you'd expect it would.

Looking around at eye level, most of the diners are women who seem to be lifelong La Prarie customers with a daily Yoga habit and an unlimited credit line at Lulu Lemon. I do Yoga sometimes, it's alright. Sadly though it does seem to bring out the worst in people - namely buckets of sweat and the thought process that, just because they happened to do a couple of sun salutations and Cobras it somehow makes them a better person or some such nonsense. Try getting into a conversation with someone about Yoga, it is literally unbearable. Clarice Starling had more fun interviewing Hannibal Lector.

You know what's worse, though? The worst kind of Yoga enthusiasts? People who walk around with a yoga mat strapped to their back. Slowly padding down the road in sandles, a smug look on their face (because they aren't working - not because they found inner piece). Check this out first just in case but I'm pretty sure it's legal to push people who carry yoga mats around into traffic.  Birkenstock wearing tossers.

There are a lot of babies in here as well. All of them screaming for attention. Screaming now and likely destined to still be screaming for attention during adulthood too, be it at a restaurant like this during the day or a board meeting at a bank whilst trying to short a third world nations currency for profit. These children are our future. If you enjoy going for breakfast alone, make sure you take some headphones or you'll have to endure the bawls of crying children or be forced to listen to Millie Parkleton-Temperly's wallpaper choices for the au pairs room.

I'm sure the staff of Granger & Co have their own registered charity, a home for shell shocked veterans who have been driven insane by screaming West London spawn and the first world problem chat of their creators. Whatever you tip in Granger & Co, it will never be enough.

I'm still hungry - always hungry - so I order something called Ricotta hotcakes.

"Are they any good?" I ask the waitress, as if somehow expecting she might say anything other than something positive about them, that she might actually say "no, leave them be, they taste like shit"

But instead she, of course, says that they are delicious and very popular before quipping "they sell like hotcakes".

I laugh even though we both know it isn't funny and that she probably says that at least 10 times a day. I'm polite like that.

The hotcakes arrive and come drenched in Syrup and butter. They're actually quite good and appear to be a pretty pleasant way to develop diabetes.

With the hotcakes finished, the coffee downed and the cheque settled, it's time to leave. A young boy is on the floor, throwing some kind of tantrum. His weary Mother, no doubt dreaming of the day her son can be packed up and crated off to Wellington, puts down her (second) breakfast Belinni, rolls her eyes and scolds him whilst her fellow diners politely pretend not to notice, their attention suddenly caught by something else.

I can't help but look though. This boy - probably some future area manager for Foxtons - is hitting the floor with his hands, screaming loudly. I catch the mothers eye and smile, as if to say 'kids eh?!' Expecting her to shrug her shoulders and say "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking, bringing West London's answer to Damien from 'The Omen' in here, spoiling your attempts at having a nice quiet breakfast".

Instead, my benevolent sympathy is returned with an icy glare and an expression normally reserved for people in the dock at an operation yewtree trial. Yes, definitely time to go.

As it's Wednesday there is no queue of desperate fools outside waiting to take my table. It wasn't the case last Sunday though - there were at least twenty people in line. Twenty! Fuck that. The last restaurant I queued up for was McDonalds last year when I got back from Glastonbury.

I mean, there probably isn't an afterlife, right? And we spend 6 months of our life lining up as it is so why waste even more precious hours of your existence queuing for a slightly above average breakfast.

Because Granger & Co - or indeed anywhere that charges that much for a meal and also expects you to stand out in the cold waiting for it - is laughing at you. They are taking the piss and you’re lapping it up like it is some kind of privilege. They may as well be spitting in your food and charging extra.

Actually, maybe that's how they make those eggs..?