A Brunch to Remember at Dirty Bones

Dirty Bones All Day Brunch, Kensington:

You know those mornings.  The ones that follow the Big Night Before.  The ones where actually getting out of bed is painful.  It was on one of those mornings that I set off across London to Dirty Bones on Kensington Church Street.  Teetering my fragile way along on the Underground I did wonder why I’d said yes.  It might have been the promise of bottomless prosecco or dirty mary mixing –  by now, it seemed foolish in the extreme.

A warm welcome and a glass of fizz does always help though, and tucked away in the private room at Dirty Bones, I began to feel almost human.  Though, I did wait for the second round before trying my hand at mixing a Dirty Mary – the Dirty Bones take on Bloody Mary – a lighter, citrussy version, made with pickle juice, lemon juice, tomato juice and vodka with a little fresh mint and cucumber to add zing.  The trick with the mint is to grab a bunch and wack it on the palm of your hand to release the oils.  I couldn’t make mine into a pretty mint rose, but it still looked quite good enough to encourage me to drink.

Meanwhile brunch was on its way.  A tasting of several of the Dirty Bones classics.

I’d like to claim that I stuck to the green cheese toastie, with avocado, tallegio and cheddar on sour dough and eschewed the wickedly meaty slow ‘n low toastie, with beef rib, charred gherkin, mustard, tallegio and cheddar.  But, it would be nothing more than a pretense at picking a slightly healthier option.  I loved them both, for different reasons.  The green toastie WAS a little lighter and fresher.  But, oh, the slow and low…a cure for any hangover.

Next up, despite not really liking egg, I managed my share of the Benedict burger  with treacle bacon (with a bit of hollandaise and a corner of the poached egg for the sake of research).  I’m not really a burger expert and while this seemed suitably ‘dirty’, I’d have been just as happy with a bacon roll, perhaps because the bacon was exceptionally good, in a treacly sticky kind of way.

Then, as a kind of intermission, we progressed to the fries – me trying to avoid the fried egg part (arguably the healthiest thing on the plate) in favour of carb laden, ketchup drizzled potato fries.

The finale, my favourite of the savoury dishes, was Chicken and Waffles – which I seem to remember included a slice of the treacle bacon alongside proper, fresh waffles with maple syrup and bbq sauce.  This is how deep fried chicken should taste, crisp and spicy on the outside with lots of tender, well flavoured meat on the bone to chew on.

There was more to come though.  I don’t believe any of us were taken by the milk and frosties, however special they might have been, a sweet milk panna cotta and a jar of frosties just has nothing on the alternative of Banana Toblerone-tella Waffles. A lush mixture of caramelised banana, toblerone-tella (that seemed like melted toblerone to me) and a delicate peanut butter gelato on a fresh waffle with smidgins of blueberry compote. Delicious.

By now any vestige of a hangover had been drowned in prosecco.  I staggered upstairs with a happy, full belly.

Recommended for curing hangovers or simply to chill on a Sunday morning.

Dirty Bones
20 Kensington Church Street
London W8 4EP