Business Breakfast – The Dean Street Townhouse

The Dean Street Townhouse is hotel/restaurant situated on a prime site on one of Soho’s most iconic streets. Owned by the Soho house group, it has been one of the go-to locations for mover and shaker business breakfasts since it opened. It was here that I had arranged to meet the mentee, someone unfortunate enough for me to give him career advice, poor soul.

From the outside the Dean Street Townhouse is a rather impressive white building dominating a corner about halfway down Dean Street. Inside the décor is a mixture of intense greens and polished wood, feeling rather like a swanky dining car.

Of the movers and shakers of old, there was little sign however with most of the tables empty. Perhaps it was just one of those things or perhaps they are moving and shaking elsewhere, but it did mean that the dining room was somewhat lacking in its customary buzz.

The mentee was running late, I’ve taught him well, so it gave me time to study the menu in more detail. Well it was that or read the news, and that’s so depressing currently as to turn me off food all together.

The menu is the usual mix of cereals, eggs with stuff &full English. Additionally, though there are some stand out items. This is one of the few places I know where you can still indulge your Edwardian taste buds with treats like kedgeree and Manx kippers.

After the mentee arrived and we’d gone through his hyperbolic excuses for being ten minutes late, we got down to the serious business of ordering. My guest went for the eggs benedict and I went for the Manx kipper.

We both ordered coffee. Here it retails at £4 a pop with a flavour as strong as it’s expensive, making all variants on offer americano, latte etc. taste pretty much the same.

The benedict was attractively plated and apparently tasted delicious, my kippers were fresh, well smoked and slightly sweet. They were some of the best I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant, and their fragrance didn’t carry to disturb the nostrils of our fellow diners.

Not everything was great however, the mentee’s juice turned up in a premixed plastic bottle, which might be more efficient but feels a bit of a swizz when you’re paying these prices. I’d also been greedy and ordered a croissant as second breakfast. This arrived so cold and stiff that it could have been used as a cosh.

I did ask for the croissant to be heated, and it was, but only by a few paltry degrees, so was now fluffy on the outside, concrete on the inside. As a result, it now resembled a sort of fluffy boomerang.

The bill when it came was £60, a lot for two small plates of food, a juice, a pastry and a couple of coffees. This would be more acceptable if everything was top notch, but it wasn’t. I’ll continue to go as I LOVE kippers and I’m not allowed to cook them at home for olfactory reasons. The variable standards though probably explain much of why so many tables were empty.

Anyway, enough of high-flying West End life, I’ll be back shortly with a look at a new family friendly eating experience in Wandsworth. Till then happy dining!