Beautiful brunch is Toast of the town
Anna recommends this wonderful start to any day of the week
In our capital, going for brunch is a competitive sport. Several of the best places don’t take bookings. I have no idea why not – maybe they like the ego boost of a queue snaking round the corner.
But I do not like queueing. Neither do I like getting up at weekday o’clock to eat expensive eggs at 9am on the dot. The whole point of brunch is that it’s relaxed, it’s sociable, it’s eaten late enough to keep you going until dinner.
Setting the alarm, leaping out of bed and then dashing out to beat the crowds sucks all the fun out of Hollandaise sauce-based weekend indulgence.
There is a hardcore who do not share my need for a soft start to a weekend morning. They are shuffling on the pavement, waiting for the doors to open.
Many of them are pushing prams, which explains why they are desperate for caffeine and carbs while the rest of us are still dozing. When you’ve been up since 6am, built a tower of blocks and watched several cycles of Octonauts, by 9am you’re ready for lunch.
The trick, however, is to take a day off during the week. Get up at leisure. I even had time to put on an alluring outfit before heading to Toast in Leith.
In an area well served with cafés, coffee shops, pubs that do food and every other modern permutation of daytime eating and drinking, its brunch is supreme.
Which is why, on previous attempts to visit, I have sat elsewhere looking disconsolately at the customers whose knees are up to a 45-minute wait.
On a Wednesday morning, however, we walked straight in. There was even a choice of tables.
Toast’s brunch menu is a pleasing mix of stone-cold classics and less predictable morning items.
The downside, of course, was choosing. Masala beans on toast with poached eggs was particularly hard to ignore. Ever since my first encounter with Indian chain Dishoom’s pimped-up Heinz, I’ve had a
weakness for haricots plus heat. How would these ones, made in-house, compare?
I reluctantly passed because huevos rancheros were shouting louder. It was a gamble but, phew, these were tremendous.
These chilli-spiked beans – black, not haricot – came in a well-flavoured tomato sauce, smoky but not eye-wateringly hot with chipotle chillis.
I added chorizo and was delighted to find actual sausages, not the lumps of paprika-flavoured gristle that sometimes abuses the name. They were a deep salmon pink and plumptious rather than challengingly chewy.
On top sat two of those perfect poached eggs. The kind that look as if they have been wrapped in very thin, stretchy white paper. Plus some cubes of feta and a few prettily curled leaves because health. And if all of that was not enough of a delight, there was a green mound of avocado mush on the side.
There was also a wrap sitting at the bottom, a bit like a soggy rug. With so many other things going on, I left it there.
Across the table, Nippy Sweetie was threatening to re-enact the famous scene from When Harry Met Sally. She had ordered smoked haddock and pak choi on sourdough. It arrived in a wobbly stack, the bread piled high with fish and greenery, bound together with punchy Isle of Mull cheddar. Another of the magnificent poached eggs sat precariously on the top.
Not only did it come with the pretty curled leaf garnish but there was a dressed green salad on the side.
It’s not in my nature to admit I’m wrong but I think her brunch edged mine.
The combination of egg, cheese and smoked haddock is a classic one, best seen in the gentlemen’s club classic omelette Arnold Bennett. This dish took these harmonious ingredients and brought them up to date. Adding pak choi was inspired. A green element is always a good idea as far as I’m concerned but my usual leaves of choice – spinach – might have been too harsh here.
The gentler pak choi did the
same job of cutting through the intense richness, but without adding a jarring iron tang.
The excellent sourdough, a thick doorstep slice of it, brought the only slight sour note required. And did a brilliant job of mopping up all the fishy, cheesy, egg yolky juices.
It was a really clever reworking of an old familiar that used newer ingredients to improve on the original.
With just about every customer requiring labour intensive poached eggs, Toast is not the fastest place to go for brunch. But sitting inside, drinking their excellent coffee, is a very different proposition to standing outside in the elements. Brunch this good is worth the wait.