Brunswick East, Dalston — Restaurant in London

Update: Everyone deserves a second chance! I ended up back at Brunswick East a year after my original review because we were filming in the building next door. My latest experience could not have been more different from the previous.

Everyone was incredibly friendly and there were water jugs on the tables! I only sampled some of the pastries, but they were delicious. It's a very cute place with a lovely team, especially the barista.

Leaving the below review up for transparency.

Sadly our visit to Brunswick East was a total disaster. We arrived at 11:54 for our reservation at 12pm and were told by the hostess that we were "pretty early." She then explained to us that we had an hour at our table and were to sanitise our hands and phones with the gel and wipes provided. This was all fine, and is outlined clearly on the website when you book. However, what was irritating was being told to wait to the side despite our table being empty from the time we arrived. The hostess then quickly became overwhelmed as a large queue of people formed (stagger bookings, maybe?) and we watched from the sidelines as she sat people who had arrived after us before us numerous times despite our table being continuously vacant. Once the hostess could be bothered to address us again it was past noon. We were directed to pick up our own water glasses from some crates on the ground (why?) and she guided us to our table where there was no water with which to fill our empty vessels. A further 13 minutes passed as we sat baking in the sun being totally ignored by anyone who worked there. By this time we started to get anxious, as we were 1/4 into our allotted time and were still no closer to being fed, let alone offered any drinks. Not even any water with which to fill our empty glasses. We couldn't figure out how, when there seemed to be such a rigid, inflexible system in place, it had all gone so terribly wrong. After 15 minutes we made the decision to leave and find another venue. It's such a shame, as the food on the menu sounded great, but their post-COVID system is broken...

Sunday brunch felt more like prison brunch... We were read the riot act upon arrival, being sternly instructed that we only had the table for an hour, that we should have already read the menu before arrival, and that arriving 5 minutes earlier than our allotted time was inconvenient. We then had to sterilise our hands and phones - possibly the most reasonable feature. We then waited while three other tables of the same group size were seated before us, then ordered to bring our own water glasses from the reception with us to our table. I was surprised we weren't told to avoid eye contact with anyone else. After finally being seated at five past the hour we then waited for 15 minutes without being spoken to before we decided to give up and head elsewhere. There's no way we'd have been able to order, let alone finish eating in the remaining 40 minutes.

We headed to one of the many other more welcoming establishments in Dalston, were seated outside immediately, and then had a wonderful socially distanced and Covid-conscious brunch at our own pace.

I won't be going back to Brunswick East until it returns to its former glory. It was such an unwelcoming, unfriendly and unnecessarily...

I am very disappointed with my experience at Brunswick East. We had brunch here on a Sunday afternoon and the sunny, buzzy courtyard was the only highlight. Our brunches (we had a baker breakfast and a burrata) were basic to say the least, and overpriced. My baker breakfast, which mainly consisted of spicy butter and sourdough bread, was too salty to be fully eaten - in the future, I would recommend to pay more attention to how much salt is used or, if short on time, to leave that to the customers' discretion. But the real surprises were yet to come. A 12.5% service charge appears out of context when you're supposed to go fetch the sugar by yourself and the tables are so close you can take part in the conversation happening next to you. On top of the service charge, while the price of the baker breakfast was listed on the menu as £8.50, we were billed £9.50. No big deal but I pointed this out to the waitress, who said that it was a typo in the menu and still asked me to pay the extra pound. I was so annoyed that I did pay in full and left, with no intentions...