15 Nov 2023
With bagels the only food on the menu, let’s hope they live up to expectations for James Cameron…
Brad and Dills have taken over the dry-cleaners at the top of London Road, converting it from a cleaner of shamefully soiled evening wear into a purveyor of coffee and bagels. As you may have noticed dry-cleaners are generally stuck in the 1950s when it comes to decor.
Delightfully Brad and Dills chose to incorporate some of these retro-fittings rather than rip them all out, but do they deliver a spotless service or are they a wash out?
We will start off with the coffee side of their offering, or in our case green tea and chai latte because we tend to get over-excited on caffeine. The drinks were presented in delightful mugs, lovely ceramics with attractive designs. Despite the appearance there were a couple of drawbacks.
Firstly there was no saucer, and as the tea was provided ‘bag-in’ this necessitated a walk across to the bin to dispose of it.
Secondly, they were very small. Drinks were not super-cheap (£2.40 for a tea, £4 for a latte), so we were expecting a bit more. This is especially galling on the tea front where the additional cost of providing a touch more hot water is negligible.
Now onto the bagels, and it does have to be bagels as there are literally no other food items on offer. It is always better to do a few things very well than try and do everything so this isn’t necessarily a problem.
The bagels arrive in wrappers, McDonald’s-style, which was something of a departure from the classiness of the mugs. What we unwrapped though, was an utter delight.
I went for the Reuben, lovely thick layered pastrami with melted Swiss cheese that gave a pleasing stringiness when you separated the two halves that was almost worthy of an M&S advert.
The bagel itself had the chewiness of authenticity and the juices had permeated the lower half to deliver an absolute flavour wallop.
My companion went for the Vegan Patty which was less juicy but was at least a lot neater. It had a very nice depth to it, and was very smooth until the final hit of chutney cut through.
Like the drinks the servings were on the small size but this did have the benefit of leaving a guilt-free doughnut gap. We had to fill this gap elsewhere, though, as selling cakes would have breached their ‘bagels-only’ policy.
Probably my favourite thing about Brad & Dills is the overall atmosphere. The pre-described dry-cleaning fixtures add a real quirkiness to the place, and whilst it is certainly not cavernous it does seem to have magically grown since its previous incumbent.
We were lucky enough to grab the window seats. Unlike most counter seats these were not stupidly high so we could relax without the fear of falling off and contemplate the people walking by, and wonder what “Sponge and Cream” used to be. These seats are a great place to see and be seen, and in our time there we saw both our neighbours and our editor (who hopefully wasn’t just checking up on us).
Brad & Dills is a great place to pop into for a small breather in a hectic day, and judging by the number of laptops on display is equally good for freelancers looking to escape their bedrooms.
I wholeheartedly applaud their sensitive refurbishment of the space, and if they could just master plates and cakes then their triumph would be complete.
