I’ll start this review off by saying that I don’t tend to leave reviews for businesses but I was disappointed with my visit today at Jonny’s Goring Bar and Kitchen, formerly known as Lazy Brunch Kitchen. I’m local to the Worthing Area and loved Lazy Brunch; it was laid-back, high quality and fairly priced, and I enjoyed going there for breakfast. I was a bit nervous when I saw that Jonny’s had taken over Lazy Brunch and today was the first time I had visited since the rebrand.

The first thing to tackle is the change in service which used to be intuitive; you’d sit at your table, order and pay at the till, and then food and drink would be bought to your table in a timely manner. Now, you sit at your table and the waiting staff come to you to take your order, give you your food/drink and to enable you to pay at the end. I believe this has been implemented to elevate the dining experience by ‘waiting on’ customers, but this has unfortunately made service very slow. I was eating on a weekday morning and still found it was taking a long time to bring out food/drink and take orders. The waiting staff are clearly very busy and rushing about, so this is no criticism of them at all! It looks like this new service style has staff rushed off their feet and it’s no wonder that service is slower as a result.

It also can’t be ignored that there have been significant changes to the menu since the rebrand too. The menu has taken more of a ‘hipster café’ approach and many of the meals that Lazy Brunch previously offered have now been adjusted for the worse. For example, the vegetarian breakfast no longer has veggie sausages but does have wilted spinach; veggie sausages were included in the vegetarian breakfast before the rebrand! I believe that the food is now priced highly and unfairly for the portions that you get and some other reviews seem to agree with me. I understand that pricing things fairly can be difficult and the cost of food/living is high, but I don’t feel the change in the meal pricing reflects the quality of service and quantity of ingredients adequately.

I won’t cut down a tree without planting one, so I will say that the changes to the interior are very pleasant and utilise the building’s space well. More tables are now available, the outdoor seating is pleasant and the interior has adopted appealing modern and art deco styles. The bar looks great and the food I had did taste good. However, I’m not sure that I feel it totally makes up for the changes to service and the menu. The waiting staff were fantastic and friendly throughout my experience and are very deserving of the new suggested 10% service charge, I just hope that they’re not working 10% harder than before due to these changes. Overall, this is now a dining experience that you could have at many other brunch and bar establishments, and it’s probably worth considering your options before coming here.