Beastly Brunch at Browns
Having reviewed brunch at Browns earlier on in the year, and finding it very pleasant, we decided on a return visit. Off we went, with bellies rumbling and eager for a good feed… Unfortunately, I have to report, this second visit was a sheer and utter disaster. Please do excuse the bullet points, I wouldn't normally use them in a review, in this case though they are the best way of highlighting the crazy catalogue of errors:
- Having ordered four Traditional Breakfasts and one small portion of Sausage and Scrambled Egg (for MiniF), we were disappointed to find out that, when our food arrived, there was no black pudding as advertised – it had been replaced rather assumptively with a rasher of bacon. No major big deal but it would have been nice to have been consulted. – The mushrooms were stone cold. Again, no major big deal, but getting worse.
- THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY BAD… The sausage served to my one year old son was undercooked and pink through the middle.
- The waitress, having disappeared to rectify the undercooked sausage, did so without offering any sauces, leaving us to wait a good 5 minutes till we could stop another member of staff to get any – most of the food was quite cool by this point.
- The sausage served to me was also undercooked – thoroughly pink through the entire middle. Bearing in mind I'm five months pregnant, and that undercooked meat can be very dangerous to unborn babies, things were getting pretty serious by this point.
- Finally, the replacement sausage delivered to me had clearly been blasted in a microwave (the gnarled side gave it away instantly). The final nail in the coffin.
On summarising our complaints at the end of the meal, we were further disappointed to receive a couple of excuses from the waitress: she didn't know they had run out of black pudding (possibly come and advise us to see if we want to change our order / swap for another item of our choice); and they don't have a microwave in the kitchen (if they don't, then the chef has clearly found some other dreadful way of cooking sausages that makes them look thoroughly microwaved).
Ultimately, they knocked two breakfasts off the bill – quite rightly so given the dreadful performance. For me, the worst part of the whole experience was the fact that, after serving up two undercooked sausages – to a child and a pregnant lady – the chef didn't even have the decency to rectify the situation by providing a decently cooked sausage. Zero care and consideration went into the cooking of that final sausage, in fact my assumption would be that he/she had been annoyed by our earlier sausage complaints. Terribly, terribly poor show.