Bad Egg are a bar / diner located in the City Point mall area and a bit of an anomaly in being located in the City but whose presentation and food is better suited to the trendy streets of Shoreditch and Hoxton; only a stone's throw away. Long time collaborator Mr Hazeel and The Missus joined this most recent exploration of London eateries.
Thoughts
Bad Egg's menu is fairly much what you might expect for a burger or diner restaurant, with the big exception that theirs seems to have any excuse to add eggs where possible. This extends to their fries (a rather unimaginative dish of a fried egg placed on top of a plate of fries) as much as it does their signature Bad Egg burger; a beef patty with nduja cheese and soft egg yolk, together with pickles, onions and yellow mustard and enclosed in a brioche bun.
On taste, the burger itself is very reminiscent of a dead hippy, with the pickles/onions/mustard combination an able substitute for Meat Liquor's signature sauce. Clearly the patties have been hand crafted with some decent quality beef, with delicious salty juices mixing with the burger sauce to make a sloppy burger with plenty of flavour. It even rivals Meat Liquor in terms of taste and texture and might have done so if it were not let down by one thing.
We were served cold food.
After waiting nearly half an hour for our main course (thankfully we had at least ordered some chicken wings as starters) it was a bitter disappointment. I assume that our order had been forgotten, as other guests who had ordered some time after us had been served before us, with our meals cooling rapidly on unheated plates with no hot lights.
Had we not had to wait so long for a food, i would have had no trouble sending it back, but hunger got the better of us and we settled for luke warm eats. We did let our waitress know and the bill was adjusted accordingly, but it is a severe disappointment that a restaurant with only 15 covers could not produce a hot meal; the absolute minimum that a restaurant ought to do.
All this aside, we thought we would order dessert to get over the failure of our meal; a pair of rice krispy and ice cream sandwiches with salted caramel drizzle and an icecream sundae should do the trick. After all, they can't make a mess of pudding as well. Right?
I wish that were the case.
Let me start with my girlfriend's sundae. This is presented as a tall knickerbocker glory glass, filled with two small scoops of ice cream, a large amount of squirted canned cream and topped off with some melted chocolate drizzle and solo kit kat stick. At a cost of £7, this really was underwhelming and almost as if the squirted cream was a deliberate move to mask how little you actually got.
But the cherry on top here was my experience with the ice cream sandwiches. In contrast with Mr Hazeel's perfect sandwich, my own came with melted ice cream that oozed all over the plate. Here another basic lesson in service is ignored; if you are going to serve two dishes of the same meal, then make sure that they are the same!
So I did what anyone ought to: I picked it up, walked to the kitchen, gave it to the waiter there and asked for a replacement without melted ice cream. Yes it is not a very British thing to do, but after a sub par main my patience was running severely thin. And unsurprisingly the replacement was a carbon copy of my friend's one; as it should have been the first time. I question why the kitchen staff thought it was acceptable to serve the same table two different versions of the same dish - quality control is clearly lacking.
Bad Egg's menu is fairly much what you might expect for a burger or diner restaurant, with the big exception that theirs seems to have any excuse to add eggs where possible. This extends to their fries (a rather unimaginative dish of a fried egg placed on top of a plate of fries) as much as it does their signature Bad Egg burger; a beef patty with nduja cheese and soft egg yolk, together with pickles, onions and yellow mustard and enclosed in a brioche bun.On taste, the burger itself is very reminiscent of a dead hippy, with the pickles/onions/mustard combination an able substitute for Meat Liquor's signature sauce. Clearly the patties have been hand crafted with some decent quality beef, with delicious salty juices mixing with the burger sauce to make a sloppy burger with plenty of flavour. It even rivals Meat Liquor in terms of taste and texture and might have done so if it were not let down by one thing.
We were served cold food.
After waiting nearly half an hour for our main course (thankfully we had at least ordered some chicken wings as starters) it was a bitter disappointment. I assume that our order had been forgotten, as other guests who had ordered some time after us had been served before us, with our meals cooling rapidly on unheated plates with no hot lights.
Had we not had to wait so long for a food, i would have had no trouble sending it back, but hunger got the better of us and we settled for luke warm eats. We did let our waitress know and the bill was adjusted accordingly, but it is a severe disappointment that a restaurant with only 15 covers could not produce a hot meal; the absolute minimum that a restaurant ought to do.
All this aside, we thought we would order dessert to get over the failure of our meal; a pair of rice krispy and ice cream sandwiches with salted caramel drizzle and an icecream sundae should do the trick. After all, they can't make a mess of pudding as well. Right?
I wish that were the case.
Let me start with my girlfriend's sundae. This is presented as a tall knickerbocker glory glass, filled with two small scoops of ice cream, a large amount of squirted canned cream and topped off with some melted chocolate drizzle and solo kit kat stick. At a cost of £7, this really was underwhelming and almost as if the squirted cream was a deliberate move to mask how little you actually got.
But the cherry on top here was my experience with the ice cream sandwiches. In contrast with Mr Hazeel's perfect sandwich, my own came with melted ice cream that oozed all over the plate. Here another basic lesson in service is ignored; if you are going to serve two dishes of the same meal, then make sure that they are the same!
So I did what anyone ought to: I picked it up, walked to the kitchen, gave it to the waiter there and asked for a replacement without melted ice cream. Yes it is not a very British thing to do, but after a sub par main my patience was running severely thin. And unsurprisingly the replacement was a carbon copy of my friend's one; as it should have been the first time. I question why the kitchen staff thought it was acceptable to serve the same table two different versions of the same dish - quality control is clearly lacking.
Conclusion
With name like Bad Egg mixed with the evening I had, some might say that the reviews write themselves.
Terrible? Possibly; the reasonable foodie in me suggests that it's too easy to disregard the whole experience as "Bad Egg are terrible" and perhaps the cook/s were having a bit of an off day. Judging from reviews I was not the only one who was served cold food and so as a result I cannot simply consider this was a one off. Neil Rankin should exert some better quality control there, as I know they should be capable of so much more.
I think if they were able to provide me with hot food I would have a better chance to judge and I did feel that were it hot, it may have even rivalled a burger from Meat Liquor. I can say this all hypothetically however, because with so many other eateries in the Square Mile I need never darken their doorstep again.
Score
4/10
Where can I find them?
Around the corner from Moorgate and Barbican tube stations (Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and Circle lines)
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