Continued from
savoury porridges with curry and asparagus flavours. You can get a similar dish here at 26 Grains in Neal’s Yard and Cuckoo is offering a Turkish-influenced Bircher at its bar with a beetroot base, topped with dukkah granola, date syrup and dried cranberries. It’s still sweet but in a musky-rich way. Wright and Mackenzie call it an “ideal lunch”.
If you’re bowled over by Bircher, there are other places to seek soaked oats. Rude Health has opened a café in Fulham, which serves oats soaked in its own-brand almond milk with activated almonds. The Modern Pantry in Finsbury Square has one on its menu: coconut and oat Bircher served with Thai black rice, maple roast banana and buckwheat. It’s vegan and gluten-free.
Even the all-American deep-fried-everything brunch spot The Breakfast Club is serving bowls of Bircher — though it serves its version in a glass, so you can pretend it’s a chocolate-chip loaded milkshake. Grain Store adds plump Earl Grey-soaked raisins to its oats, and Crussh’s cacao and coconut Bircher pots are dairy-free but satisfyingly malty. It’s chocolate for breakfast but with a nod to health.
Bircher has even been translated into a form of street food. Rebecca Rhodes-Evans, of Rock My Bowl, is, well, rocking the boat. From her stand, which was positioned most recently at Druid Street Market, she’s serving up top-quality “power bowls” of soaked oats and chia seeds topped with seasonal fruit. She does a lunchtime version too, combining “avocado, toasted seeds and a squeeze of lime to make a savoury lunchtime bowl”. Avocado toast might be the showy star of Instagram but Bircher is bowling its sceptics over.