Brunch at The Botanist

10 April 2012

Poor old America. It's been getting such a bad press for so long. If you believed everything you read, you'd think the only thing our old ally stands for is military intervention and that they have the longest election process in the world.

What nonsense. They've put a man on the moon. Made the most unforgettable movies. Given us the hamburger. The confidence to be unapologetic about success. And they've always valued brunch in a way their English cousins have never really grasped.

Brunch is a vastly underrated treat that I discovered when I returned to my native Canada in my late teens and first sampled the delights of pancakes with maple syrup and piles of crisp, streaky bacon.

Sexy and indulgent, brunch is never bolted or hurried. Which is why I found myself meeting the romantic novelist late one Saturday morning.

She had just returned from California and was eager to talk about America and to sample eggs Benedict again, while I wanted to try a new Chelsea restaurant, The Botanist, which offers all-day eating, including brunch.

All-day eating is the flavour of the month, the year. As smoking-free pubs seem to be dying on their feet, these open-all-hours restaurants are thriving.

They're like an upmarket version of the now-defunct Happy Eater, where you could drop in at any hour and find the right meal for the time of day.

Of course, Happy Eaters served extremely naff food and were perched alongside roaring, fume-filled motorways, while The Botanist sits sedately in a prime position on Sloane Square and aims to attract a much more sophisticated clientele.

The novelist had done her research. Did I know that Sloane Square was named after Sir Hans Sloane, who made a canny investment by purchasing the manor of Chelsea in 1712? I confess, I did not. Or that he was a botanist (hence the restaurant's name) who invented milk chocolate? Once again, no.

But by now I was bored with Sir Hans and beginning to get hungry and so I studied the room while my guest read aloud from the menu.

The Botanist conforms to current decorative trends with its comfortable taupe leather chairs, wooden floors and crisp white drapery.

Natural light floods in - even on the typically rain-lashed summer's day that we were there. There are large contemporary chandeliers that resemble crystal wagon wheels, but it's the backdrop at the far end that is startlingly pretty and makes this room.

Backlit panels of stained glass depict all the things your average botanist would drool over. Leafy plants. Fish. A heron. Various crustaceans. Sir Hans would love it.

The novelist ordered eggs Benedict which were served with parma ham. She asked for the eggs to be 'dippy', which they were, if a tad cold. But she said they tasted a million times better than those she had eaten in a very posh country club in Santa Barbara, where the eggs were as hard as it would be for Gordon Brown to get a standing ovation at the next Labour party conference. She reported that Americans moan constantly about the price of petrol (rather annoyingly, she'd taken to calling it 'gas'), which costs half of what we pay.

I opted for blueberry muffins with syrup that tasted close to perfect - melting, fruit-filled and uber-sweet - and laden with memories of my youth, which made them sweeter still.

Although pudding is not strictly a composite of brunch, we recklessly decided to share a blackberry soufflé with blackberry sorbet and chocolate chips.

It was delivered with a flourish. Warm, risen, the prettiest pale purple and dusted with icing sugar, it looked as if it had just been photographed for a cookery book.

But the chocolate chips were not quite big enough to taste properly chocolatey, just rather annoyingly gritty.

Helped along by first-rate staff, the atmosphere was relaxed and the mix of other diners varied - couples, families and elegant, older Chelsea-ites. What was distinctly lacking was the ra-ra breed known to us all as Sloanes. But then I shall never regard them in quite the same way now that I've discovered they were named after an Ulster-born botanist who invented milk chocolate.

The Botanist
Sloane Square, London, SW1W 8EG

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