OneRoot Bakery & Brunch — Restaurant in London

Always a chaos and mistakes there. Nice design and nice toys (all electronic ones doesn't work though to reduce noise I think), soft area is nice but small. Seems that children do like it there. My child (19 months) definitely likes to play there now but not before he turned one. It is usually too crowdy in the soft area for babies. With a lot of older kids jumping around in a small space it is unsafe for babies. The reasons I put two stars are the service, food and prices. Prices are too high for what they offer, service is almost always with mistakes (apart from the situations when owner herself deals with customers). Finger food plate (£3) from kids menu is toasted bread triangles, houmus, carrot sticks and bell pepper sticks - pepper in my case always (at least 4 times) softy. You have to leave your food sometimes to keep an eye on your child and the food could be cleared from the table (as happened with me today, £9 breakfast half eaten was just cleared away while I played with my child). When I ordered the old gentleman who served me told me (I asked before order) that fruit bawl (£3) from kids menu contains bananas, apples, strawberries and blueberries, in reality it was just bananas and apples. He added berries later but told me that this is not in their menu so he is kind of doing me a favour adding them ("normally we don't do it but this is on me" he said or something like that). I payed £20 and something for my half eaten breakfast+ tea+ finger food+ kids pasta (really small portion and he refused to put tomato sauce on the side - I can't imagine the reason and he couldn't explain) + fruit bawl. Breakfast is quite good there (I mean all the toasts and eggs), coffee and tea is qiute good too, but there's no sensible lunch options even for kids (apart from tiny portion of tomato pasta or pizza if you already give pizza to your child). My long experience with this place tells me that whenever I come something is gonna be wrong and disappointing. So mostly 2 stars is for service and overall atmosphere. Always leaving a bit disappointed with a slight feeling that I spent there too much...

Poor approach and service! I live near Angel but made my way especially to Highbury Barn to check this place out. The set up is nice, looked clean, though the soft play area is disappointingly small. I parked my buggy, undressed my 1-year-old and made my way to order. As a I ordered my flat white the lady at the till suggested that the minimum spend is £5 or a £3 fee for using the soft play. Fine, understandable. I ordered a cake which came to £6.50 or so. Expensive, didn't really want the cake but it's Islington so hey... As I hand over my card the lady looks at me disapprovingly and now informs me that there's a minimum spend of £7 on the card. As I look pleadingly at my empty purse thinking that the nearest cash point is quite a way away she launches into a tirade of how they are not "Costa or Starbucks" and how many people don't know that businesses get charged for card transactions. It felt like she didn't know before opening a coffee shop and was now lecturing me. The approach was such that I really felt like a hostage: 'there's no other children's places so pay up or else' type situation. You know what, my baby is starting to walk so I'm gonna make a point to save my money, get my coffee elsewhere, and head to Highbury Fields instead. She made faces when cancelling the order and saw me off with a sarcastic "see you soon". The truth of the matter is that I hardly ever spend any less than £7 hanging out in a cafe but as a new mum I don't want to feel like someone is intentionally exploiting my perceived...

We found this cafe online while looking for a place to meet for work and have an area for little ones to play. We both travelled quite long to get there. There were number of things why this cafe turned out to be a mistake: it was packed and barely a space to sit. We ordered a cup of coffee each. Probably would have ordered more if it would have been more peaceful. When I arrived I took my baby put of the pram to get settled, when one of the staff who spoke no English simply pushed my pram away from me to get out of the way without asking me whatsoever which I found very rude. But the main point that made me rate this at 1 star was at the end when we were paying when the lady at the till explained we are charged £3 extra for the soft play. When I mentioned we didn't even use the soft play she quite abruptly responded that we've been using the table and stayed for longer than an hour and they have to make a living somehow. Now all of this wouldn't matter if the place would be advertised as a soft play with cafe rather than the other way around and also there were no signs whatsoever to say that the soft play has extra charge. Nobody explained us at the beginning either. There are many other cafes that are bigger, more peaceful and not charging for their seats so it's best to...