FuMu — Restaurant in Zhongshan District

I've been here a handful of times now - it's a great place for casual dinner and drinks (burgers/sandwiches are good, and Negroni on happy hour is awesome), but I think the breakfast is mediocre. It's not very flavorful, and almost seems like random leftovers thrown on a plate and heated up in the microwave (sorry if that's overly harsh). Nothing tastes very fresh or high-quality, and the portions could be larger. Bloody Mary is also pretty basic and watery, which is a shame since it's one of their main advertising points for breakfast.

Their breakfasts are also inflexible for what you're allowed to sub. Usually at western breakfast places there will be a main meal "type", and then you can sub out like... bacon for sausage, or for beans, etc. But here you just get what you get on the plate, and if you can't eat or don't want one of the items, they can't sub it for another thing. I think if I'm ordering the "American Breakfast", which is pancakes/bacon/eggs, but I don't want the meat, I should be able to swap it for something else (like beans or whatever). I'm not trying to game the system, I just wanted pancakes but not bacon. My girlfriend is also allergic to mushrooms, but they said they're not swappable for anything, we're just not going to give them to you. So... she just gets less food for the same price. Maybe this is a weird nitpick, but it kind of annoyed me.

Staff is very nice, but they could have a bit more hustle. We had to flag people down for a while before they'd show up. One time my gf was trying to get someone's attention, and a cook was just openly staring at her waving arm, and didn't let a server know or do anything - just deer in headlights. He wasn't even cooking, he was just standing there. Like... a restaurant should work as a unit, he could have easily called over to one of the servers and gave them a nudge, but he just stared. Also, they'd clean some dishes up right away, but leave others for like 30 minutes. Just some little inconsistencies that could be better.

The atmosphere is great and I've always had good experiences at night, but the breakfast could really use some work, the menu could be more flexible, and the staff could be more attentive.

One more nitpick/suggestion: Don't put salt/pepper shakers with the double-open flaps on top (one with the small holes, and one with the giant hole). I wasn't paying attention and almost spilled salt all over my entire meal bc I opened the giant-hole side instead of the sifter side. Just get ones that are all small holes. Why would anyone even need the other side? It's just an accident...

A subpar experience.

Wanted a proper English breakfast for brunch/lunch and saw quite a few people recommend Fumu. Couple of issues that I want to highlight:

1. Promos - On the official website of the restaurant, they had a promo for "buy one get one free English breakfast and omelettes". My party actually got up ealier than usual just for this promo, if not we would have still gone there for lunch. Unfortunately, when we got there, the service staff claims that this promo does not exist and the website is not updated. Also, we got informed that breakfast comes with black coffee, which you could upgrade to a latte, but not any other beverage, they could be more flexible with that.

2. Food - We ordered the jumbo English breakfast, wasn't quite the jumbo I remember from my experiences in the UK. It was more like a regular English breakfast. Was plated well, good for photos for sure. Eggs and tomato were the best part. The bread was thinly sliced, sausage was not good English sausage, mushrooms were not good quality mushrooms. The worst thing though, was that we found a long strand of hair in the egg of one of our plates. We noticed a lady chef who only did her hair up in a loose ponytail.

3. Service - The service staff was friendly. She was also apologetic about the hair, and switched the barely touched breakfast for a new plate immediately. However few little things - the cutlery set came in a box, with 1 piece of tissue, and not 1 each for each diner. Also when the new plate was brought, they didn't bring new cutleries even though they took them away the first time. Little touches like this could greatly improve the experience.

4. Atmosphere - Its a nice relaxing place, love the decor. Also love how they recycle Roku Gin bottles to serve water. Also love the creative use of a drum pedal as a sanitizer dispenser. Negative point though - toilet was out of order? For a proper restaurant, I don't think this should...

After reading multiple positive reviews, my wife and I were really eager to try FuMu since it's a 5 min walk from our place. However, it's always packed on weekends. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to dine at FuMu this afternoon and must say the dining experience was simply mediocre.

Service I was the only patron when I arrived so it wasn't the usual weekend packed house, the service was just average, no warm greeting or enthusiasm with the staff. I was told to sit anywhere I please and was handed the menu after I have been swiping on my phone for a good 5 min.

Food I ordered the slow cooked pork collar and considering the price the portion of the meal was very small, to put it in perspective I get full from a regular size McDonald's meal (I was still hungry after my meal at FuMu). The taste of the pork collar was good but not impressive. I was also given a pack of frozen butter that was impossible to spread on the bread and had to inform the staff to warm the butter for me.

Unless my wife insist I am probably not going to come back again. The restaurant is pet friendly which is a plus.

Forgot ro take a photo of my meal so I'm posting a receipt...