Grounded Coffee
Typos can make the most boring thing terribly amusing. Perhaps due to the area I work in, a spelling mistake can send people into fits of laughter. A misplaced comma can spell doom (or hilarity). Neither of which is a reputation that you want to get. Either in work or play.
This Grounded Coffee. A trendy cafe in Bow. Warehouse, layback design. Definitely a modern feel. I hoped that it wouldn’t fall for that stereotypical of more picturesque locations by being a case of form over substance.
Latte. Fairly ordinary as missing much coffee taste. On the plus side, it wasn’t bitter. On the negative side, it didn’t taste like anything except flavoured hot water.
Buttermilk pancakes, a stack of homemade fluffy pancakes made of creamy and soft mixed-flours dough, then flavoured with Mauritius’ vanilla essence. Served with side of fresh mixed berries, creme fraiche, diced banana, and side of passion fruit and maple syrup. One of the more full descriptions of food stuff I have had recently. So many words only heightens the chance of putting a foot wrong, or perhaps opening yourself up to annoying food bloggers.
This is the first time that I’ve heard about “mixed-flours dough”. Perhaps something to tickle your fancy although I do wonder what other types of dough they had in mind to go into a pancake as opposed to flour. The dish was fairly samey and not very interesting… Despite the rather fulsome description, the pancakes were a little deflated. Guess we know where the energy went.
Uncle burger, grilled beef burger with pan-fried turkey bacon, creamy Monterey Jack cheese, caramelised onions, onion ring, beef tomato, baby gem lettuce and burger sauce and fries. Too many ands here. I don’t think burger sauce and fries are meant to be a unit.
The fries were good. The burger, I’m still trying to make my mind up on. The patty was kind of tasteless, the cheese and other toppings were tastless fillers. The onion ring, sitting on top of the bun perhaps because it was late to the party, seemed like the third uncle at your birthday party. Unwanted but someone you can’t really tell to get lost.
In another sense, the position of the ring reminded me a crown. Although, I don’t think this burger would be winning any competitions soon. If their allusion to “uncle” was to those games I played as a kid, whereas the pain ratcheted up, you were to say “uncle” when it was too much, then I’m probably going to tap out before I’ve had my second bite.
Blueberry muffin. Fairly non-descript, with some berry sauce and real berries sprinkled on top. This lack of wordy description as opposed to the burger didn’t mean that this was different on the delicious metre. Just no verbose dialogue to distract you from a dish that just wasn’t that good.
On the way out, we walked by a park. And we saw three geese huddled on the back of the mummy swan. They looked (suitably) terrified of something. Perhaps they had been to Grounded Coffee recently too. Might be mixed bird burger next time, perhaps you can call that the auntie burger.
A quieteating 6/10.
Lunch (2 courses) was about GBP 20 excluding drinks and service.
Grounded Coffee Co (their website isn’t working)
9 Whitechapel Rd,
London E1 1DU