Food: Milk

Somewhere I've been meaning to visit for so long now is Milk in Balham! We've driven past this place so many times and even tried to visit once but it was rammo! It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing so I didn't have the camera on me so forgive me for the phone pictures, I'm going to do a full review another time as the decor was amazing and it's hard to appreciate from these photo's.

Inside the place looks amazing, everything looks so clean and rustic. We were offered a choice of where to sit and ended up grabbing a table right by the big glass window that runs adjacent to the street.

Although the menu doesn't actually show any steamed milk coffee's (It just says white/black/expresso) they made us latte's that we really enjoyed, milk was not too hot which is just how I like it. I chose "The Convict" which consisted of pretty much all of my favourite breakfast things; English muffin, streaky bacon, sausage, scrambled egg, hash brown and hangover sauce! The sauce was awesome and resembled a kind of rich barbecue like taste. This was topped with freshly grated parmesan, something I've never considered for breakfast but was god like in taste.

I could go on about how great the food was (I was really taken back by it), however the thing that I really loved was the kitchen. The kitchen is right in the middle of the restaurant and no bigger than your average bathroom, with one chef making the meals. You could just tell that everything was so fresh, and this reflected in the taste of everything. Georgia went for a simple scrambled eggs on toast and the eggs were so creamy and delicious.

So typically I wasn't totally finished there, I went and had a browse at their cake display that we walked past as we came in. The staff seemed super nice and friendly and helped me out with what to chose. They had a really cool range of cakes with very different ingredients. I ended up gong for a hazelnut cake that was so damn good and went down great with another coffee.

This was meant to be a short review because of the pants pictures but I was honestly so impressed by this place I can't wait to go back any day now, I'm literally making excuses for the need of breakfast,

Get down to Milk in Balham, it's really easy to get to if you have a tube station near  and you won't regret it I promise!

JIM

Instagram/Twitter: @whatjamesate

coffee: timberyard, old street

Timberyard

61-67 Old Street

London 

EC1V 9HW

So to kick things off I'm going to tell you about my trip to Timberyard last week with my girlfriend Georgia and flatmate Olivia. You will find Timberyard on Old Street on the main road heading into Shoreditch next door to a cool little bike shop. The first thing you see and feel is the workplace vibe it has, with plug sockets, free wifi (standard coffee shop procedure these days) and iPads on their bars. Nevertheless the place looks awesome inside, as you go to the counter you are greeted by a mountain of mouth watering cakes but also plenty of fresh fruit and healthier snacks.

We managed to grab a table despite it being pretty busy inside and there is table service once inside. We ordered a yummy coconut and raspberry cake as well as a flat white, latte and a matcha latte (WTF!?). The coffee didn't come too quickly which I actually thought was a good sign of love going into our drinks. My flat white was lovely and required no sugar at all with nice creamy milk. Olivia went for a matcha latte which is new to me and was described as a green tea-ish latte, it's next on my things to try! I could smell nice food and so investigated. It seems most of their food is made daily and they were out of a lot of things by the time we got there (around 4). I ended up with an egg and cucumber toasted sarny, it was great considering it was all they had left.

Overall it's definitely somewhere to check out, especially if you're planning to chill and get on with work as they accommodate so well for this, they even have a meeting room downstairs! Nice chilled atmosphere and decent grub, would definitely recommend a visit if you're in the area.

Jim

Instagram/Twitter: @whatjamesate