I HAVE always been at precisely the wrong life stage to truly understand brunch. Around about the time that early-2010srestaurateurs were turning smashed avocado, sharing pans of shakshuka and “bottomless” day drinking into an unstoppable formula, I was a 29-year-old newish dad, slowly awakening to the fact that early parenthood wasn’t compatible with languorous mid-afternoon meals or the speed-necking of seven mimosas within a rigorously observed 90-minute window.
I was never a teeth-grinding fundamentalist about it; never one to deny strangers the frivolous thrill of challah French toast, a very involved Bloody Mary menu and the encroaching thud of a 4pm hangover. It was more that I had made peace with the fact that, like CrossFit or ethical non-monogamy, it was a millennial obsession that I would never be wholeheartedly partaking in.
These days, however, I have belatedly started to appreciate the virtues of a capital B, Antipodean-style brunch. First came a January trip to Sydney: a place where a clothed torso counts as formal wear, and the all-day eating culture is exactly as accomplished, alluring and boundlessly inventive as every Australian you know says it is. And now I have fallen pretty hard for Tashas — a Battersea-based, first UK outpost for restaurateur Natasha Sideris’s South African café chain and a place that is meticulous in composition, breezy and generous in effect, and dusted with enough intangible, southern hemisphere magic to turn even the terminally brunch-averse into true believers.
Tashas sits across the way from Battersea Power Station’s main mall, in a capacious, glass-fronted unit that’s luxuriously rendered in the neutral cream, white and taupe tones of a Kardashian holiday home. Bowls of pristine citrus fruit perch on counters. Hip-wiggling bossa nova music drifts from the speakers. And all the while, an encouragingly mixed crowd — breakfasting retirees, iPad-jabbing children, Gen Z girls out for a birthday lunch — does its best to add some colour to the pervading atmosphere of gently bland tastefulness. “It feels,” whispered my mate Mark, looking around, “a bit like a Zara that’s been turned into a restaurant.”
Happily, the slight lifelessness of the décor only amplifies the spring-loaded, Ottolenghian vigour of the food. Perhaps you go for the sweetcorn scramble: a mass of grilled and creamed corn, soft scrambled egg, rubbled crispy bacon and an enlivening lick of Aleppo pepper butter. Maybe you opt for a brightly dressed quinoa and pickled beetroot salad, a Portuguese-inspired steak roll dribbled in thrumming, spiced garlic sauce, or the succulent cornflake pork schnitzel, fried a deep mahogany and served with homely potato salad.
Two visits taught me that Tashas foldable menu is both uncomplicated and eclectic; it crashes drunkenly from mini cheeseburgers and yoghurt-dribbled papaya to prawn curry and sumptuous, cinnamon-dusted pumpkin fritters. But it is the constant through-line of Spring-loaded flavours: a Tashas-style steak prego, above. Inset, a sticky pecan tarte tatin served with cognac caramel coddling attention to detail that makes everything cohere and sing.Notably, this conscientiousness costs.
The first UK outpost for the South African café chain is dusted with intangible, southern hemisphere magic
Long established as a hit in the UAE, some of Tashas prices (£14 for soup; £20 for a tuna mayo sarnie) feel better attuned to the spending power of a Dubai financier than a recession-age Londoner. And Sideris’s commitment to freshness — everything here is made to order — can lead to erratic waiting times and, in the case of an arid side of over-griddled chicken, harried cooking.
But the increased clamour for tables during my most recent visit tells its own story. At that last meal, we finished witha dessert so good it was basically hilarious: a flawless, miniature tarte tatin, ethereally rich, inlaid with sticky pecans, and served with a racy, pourable measure of cognac caramel.
Brunch may not be your bag; the mere thought of the portmanteau might enrage you. But I cannot see a universe where most of us will not be charmed by the gloss, rigour and sun-warmed generosity of Tashas.
