UPDATE 17.01.2020 – ALL REMAINING FOXLOW RESTAURANTS, INCLUDING THE ONE IN SOHO, HAVE NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED.
We have just returned from our brunch at Foxlow in Soho. There are two sister outlets at equally trendy Balham and Clerkenwell. Foxlow has been founded by the same good folks that brought us Hawksmoor (with 6 outlets in London and 1 in Manchester). We had recently been blown away by a visit to their branch in Air Street, no more than 5 minutes walk away. Some of the best steak we’ve had at a very reasonable price in a great environment with quick, friendly, professional service (highly recommend!).
We had also looked at a recent article in the Evening Standard (I’m saying ‘recent’, but they are of course known to repost old articles without any new research; some ‘recent’ articles recommend restaurants that have closed down months ago) by accident, which listed Foxlow as one of the best London brunch spots.
The location and the interior décor are very pleasant. Some elements of a 50s U.S. diner combined with modern furniture. Service was very friendly, quick, and helpful. We decided to go for their signature fried chicken, egg & croissant waffle with sausage gravy (£13) and the avocado chilli & lime toast with eggs and smoked salmon (£8 + £2.50 + £4), two coffees (£3.25 each), and a bloody mary for £8.
Everything arrived after just a short wait. The chicken looked pleasant, nicely and only very thinly battered, with an unusually pleasant looking fried egg (still a bit soft, just how we like it) on top. The avocado salmon toast looked outrageously tasty, with lovely poached eggs on top.
And that’s about when things started to go down-hill, not completely, but a fair bit into that direction: the tastes and textures were very average, the gravy was absolutely not our thing (fair enough, no need to have any of it), the waffle was below par, the salmon was so unspectacular it deserves a medal, hardly any flavour and a strange mixture of being extraordinarily soft and at the same time stringy. The chilli part of the avocado toast solely consisted of two thin slices of chilli pepper, as far as we could tell. The coffee and the cocktail were rather bland, too.
In short: nice atmosphere, great service, but there are about (literally!) 1,000 places or more in London who do brunch much better. 2.5 out of 5 in our book.
Looking for some great brunch places within a 5 to 20-minute walk’s distance? Try Berners Tavern, Pachamama, Dean Street Town House, or Aquavit.
Or into ideas for things to do? Check out our posts about our escape room experience, about our sailing boat trip in Lisbon, or about our stay at the Sheep in Sheep Street, Stow-on-the-Wold, in the Cotswolds.
Looking for adventure? Check out our posts about skydiving, our rides on a helicopter, a jetski, two very fast rubber boats (on the Thames and near the North Pole), an amphibian Vietnam War vehicle, a hot air balloon, and a jetlev.
