Mud — Restaurant in London

If you're looking for a good trendy, expensive brunch, go to Juliet's around the corner.

Whilst the food here is genuinely of a high quality and the woman at the front of house is happy to help, my girlfriend and I ordered a bit of lunch each and I was disappointed. My girlfriend's meal was meant to have salmon put on it. It was missing. When mentioned, a plate of cold salmon was walked across the venue and was put on the plate. Not great. But, mistakes happen, right? Maybe on occasion; but not as much as happened here. The meal I ordered was £13.50 "frogo" something-or-other. The meal I got was the £12 plantain. Of course, not only was I charged for the more expensive of the two meals but there was literally no acknowledgement that this was wrong. Only at home did I look it up and realise. For me, this was not necessarily an issue, but imagine if I had a dietry requirement or illness. Serving the wrong food can be catastrophic. Standards are not upheld in the kitchen. Oh, added to that, the people served after us were also given the wrong meal! It might be a major failure but it is at least consistent.

The atmosphere here is unusual. The rap/trap music in the background does not fit the atmosphere, but, I am getting older each year so maybe the swearing, sex references, and gang culture promoted in the lyrics is just what is appropriate right now. Who am I to say? What was really strange though was a member of staff rapping along with the music, saying (quite audibly) something about his "btches". I get it, the music is great, but there is a time and a place. After the rap, he saw a friend outside and let the whole place know about it ("Oh my days there is *** outside!"). Another floor staff member shortly walked out after him. As we left, these two were both sitting in their friend's car. In their work clothes. Is there not something about cross contamination in the FSA guidebook? Maybe that's also something that only used to happen in my day.

This place is yet-another attempt at "smart-casual-hipster-brunch". The formula has been...

If you have an allergy or intolerance, I don’t recommend Mud.

My partner and I came for brunch today. We both have to avoid gluten, and when we noticed that the menu didn’t have specified allergens for each dish (first clue) we made a point of asking whether the things we wanted to order had gluten in them. The waitress checked with the kitchen, came back and then said they had no gluten. We ordered, got coffees pretty quickly, and waited.

After 30 mins of waiting for our food, the waitress came back and said unfortunately there had been an issue and that the dishes we ordered DID contain gluten. Clearly they only noticed when they were about to start preparing our order half an hour after they’d taken it.

She asked us to order something else. We were obviously frustrated that it had taken that long to see the mistake and that we now had to reorder and wait again. They said they would try bump the order to the top of the queue to make it faster.

Another 25 mins later, no food, while all the other tables around us had ordered eaten and gone. When I asked what was happening they said it took time to clear the fryers and prepare everything gluten free - but no one had told us that it would take so long or we’d have left after the first issue. We had somewhere else to be at this point and were starving but they told us it was coming out right now so we waited.

Another 10 mins later it finally arrived…

My partner had to leave after two mouthfuls to get to where he needed to be.

The team seemed understaffed but clearly there are issues in the kitchen and in communication. They waived the bill which I appreciate, but it shouldn’t take an hour to get a (pretty average, expensively priced) brunch out on a Saturday morning.

At the very least, please update your menus to highlight specific allergens in each dish, or just don’t cater...

This place has been on my list for many, many years but living north London means I’m rarely in this area. Visited on a Sunday, group of 3.

Compared to what I had previously seen, it appears that something has changed. I’m not sure if it’s ownership? In any case, we found the menu to be very expensive for a casual neighbourhood style place and given the overall experience (compared the menus online, prices increased a lot since 2020 - for example pancakes increased to £16, from £10 and granola increased to £15, from £8). These are basic menu items, closer to central / fancy London hotel prices. I do understand everything has risen in price, but these feel like huge increases combined in reduced quality of service judging by reviews from people who have been multiple times.

Overall design of the place felt very crammed, with the open kitchen creating a strong smell of cooking and a fan / open door making the back of the venue cold.

One person receiving customers, taking orders and making hot drinks. Are you mad? I felt so sorry for them. That’s really bad, impossible for one person. No wonder everything was slow, from taking the order, receiving the order and then payment. I must say, they really did their best given the circumstances.

Food quality was decent (still felt overpriced, each dish pushing £20). Coffee was good but not hot. Tea served in a glass cup, looked a bit murky. Didn’t take any pictures as by the time it arrived we were all so hungry to eat.

Generally felt a bit embarrassed for having suggested the venue to the people I was with who had come up to London for the day from the south coast.

Wouldn’t return, or recommend based on our experience. Wish I had visited years ago, seemingly...