Oak&Poppy — Restaurant in London

BIZARRE. Opened just over a week ago I believe, we were looking forward to trying out brunch today at what would have been our new local. We arrived and the restaurant was at about 50% capacity. The host said that they were too busy and we had to come back in about 45 minutes (at which point it would have been the lunch menu). We were apparently allowed to sit and have coffee but they couldn't take a food order. So we asked to be clear - that on a bank holiday Monday i.e. what is bound to be an extremely busy time that they should have prepared for - their kitchen cannot physically cope with only 50% of the available covers in the restaurant? The host was like that's right, yes! Her attitude was very confusing to be turning away custom as a brand new kid on the block. Normally in London it's quite acceptable for people to queue up for brunch, not to be turned away when there were empty seats? We had such high hopes for this place and have been eagerly awaiting it's opening, but if they are operating at half capacity on purpose I doubt it will survive and tank quickly like the predecessor of the space. We went to good old faithful Englands Lane for brunch instead, rather than having coffee for an hour and MAYBE getting to order some lunch at some point in the day at Oak and Poppy. Avoid until they sort...

Amazing Brunch Spot. I saw an advert on instagram of this place and I checked out their instagram page straight away. The photos looked great so I booked straight away. There were a lot of tables and times available for a Saturday morning which was good. They do ask for bank details to secure the booking. No doubt there would be a charge for not turning up to a booking.

On arrival the cafe was super cute, the decor was lovely, all pastel colours with a beautiful bar as soon as you walk in. There is a tree in the middle of the room which really pulls the theme together.

The breakfast menu was sensational, I wanted to try everything as it all sounded so good. A friendly waitress came over straight away to take our coffee order whilst we perused the menu- which was nice.

In the end I went for the avocado and poached eggs on sourdough with some bacon. My partner had the marmalade french toast with berries and mascarpone. We also had a side of hash browns with truffle Parmesan.

The food came and it was amazing! The eggs were bright orange and they were not shy with the avocado! I would go as far as say it’s the best breakfast I’ve had in a long time. The presentation of the dishes were beautiful.

The bill was £50 for two people, including coffee.

I would 100% recommend visiting for...

The food is absolutely fantastic - good size portions and perfect balanced flavour! Finally a decent place for food in Hampstead. The service on the other hand needs some work. The day we went we were looked after by 3 different people and only one of them was great (long curly hair guy, sadly didn’t catch his name). The waitress was ok - was very slow and forgot a couper of things. And then out of nowhere in a middle of dessert and drink we were told by a manager? (I heard him speaking Italian to a collègue, so presume he’s Italian) that we had to get up and move to bar stools to finish our dinner - we were never warned that the table was booked and had no idea we had a cut off time. Also we had a 3 year old with us, who was not able to sit on a bar stool anyways. The manager was rude and not a singe apology. He kept waking past us and give us stink looks whilst we were finishing. We had to down our drinks and leave. It didn’t help that the people waiting for a table were eyeing us as well . I have never been treated like this in my life! So embarrassing. What a shame as otherwise it was a very pleasant evening. Please do some staff training as I would love to get back...