19 Mar 2024
James Cameron goes in search of breakfast delights at the acclaimed eatery…
It was a very damp Saturday morning when we headed over to Smallford, and most of St Albans seemed to be slowly submerging, as if obsessing over garden rooms and school ratings had suddenly been declared sinful and we should maybe start considering knocking up an ark in our back gardens. Instead we decided to make our own sunshine by heading to the Smallford Farm Shop for breakfast.
From humble beginnings as little more than a couple of chairs next to a selection of cakes,
the café at Smallford Farm Shop is now a bustling (very bustling this morning) and well- apportioned space, taking up roughly half of the footprint.
It is very light and open, with giant windows creating a nice sense of space but also exposing the building to the elements, though the little portable heaters they had out were doing their best to fight back.
There is also art for sale on the walls, ranging from Athena-style prints to Jackson Pollock-style actual paintings.
To make it there you have to run the gauntlet of the farm shop itself, but keep your eyes fixed firmly ahead and ignore the siren call of the artisanal crisps and glistening scotch eggs, there will be plenty of time for them later.
You also might want to book ahead at the weekend, we were able to waltz straight to a table but a hefty queue started to develop not long afterwards.
The menu is not particularly extensive, but is focussed. For breakfast (which runs from 9 to 11.45am) there are a variety of eggs with hollandaise sauce, some granola options for those who can’t work out how to serve themselves granola at home and a Full English for both carnivores and vegetarians.
There is only one vegan option at breakfast, the formerly ubiquitous avocado on toast, but our friendly server was able to veganise the Full English by leaving off the eggs.
As you might expect from a café they had a good range of drinks, including a vivid green smoothie that came with a good hefty hit of mint and a particularly fine chai latte.
The green tea we ordered came in a very attractive tea set, although strangely there was only one saucer between the two cups and the green tea had an unadvertised and unwelcome undertone of vanilla to it.
It was quite a wait for the food, possibly due to the aforementioned bustle, but this wasn’t a disaster as you could spend the time whilst you were waiting perusing the farm shop.
Possibly this is their cunning strategy to enhance sales of gourmet popcorn-making kits.
When it did arrive the plates were beautifully presented, although portion sizes were on the small side.
This was particularly noticeable with the vegan semi-Full English Breakfasts, where no attempt had been made to replace the exorcised eggs. Whilst not strictly required an extra mushroom would have been a nice touch, especially because the mushrooms were one of the highpoints of the breakfasts
Full and thick, juicy and flavoursome, they point to the benefits of having breakfast somewhere that is able to source really top quality ingredients. Similarly the avocados were well-balanced and tasted fresh.
The tomatoes rounded off the trinity of top quality produce.
They were served on the vine which looked nice but made them tricky to eat without also consuming said vine.
The vegetable sausages were a bit of a disappointment next to these stars, being on the soft side and slightly too reminiscent of Bird’s Eye veggie fingers.
This is a shame because for those that can quieten their moral qualms about eating meat the real sausages were an absolute delight. Again the quality of the ingredients really shone through, and the seasoning was perfect.
All the elements on the standard breakfast worked together in perfect harmony.
The beans also deserve a special shout out. They were served in little dishes to avoid cross-contamination, but it you let them run free then the end-game of the breakfast, when all the various juices were freely mingling together in every mouthful, was an absolute joy.
The Eggs Benedict, to round off our breakfast tour, was a delight both visually and tastily.
Two expertly poached eggs below a big splodge of citrusy hollandaise and above a thick cut of ham created an architectural dig of amazingness.
The sourdough had a good flavour, but across the board it was a bit tough and taxed the knives we were given to the limit.
The half of our party that had access to the full menu left Smallford feeling able to face whatever terrible weather this country would throw at us next, whereas the other half left feeling maybe a little short-changed.
If you yourself are similarly unconstrained then a visit to the Smallford Farm Shop is a lovely way to spend a weekend morning, possibly walking there along the Alban Way (when it stops being a river) to justify the intake of calories.
If you are only choosing from the vegan options, though, it may be worth considering somewhere with a bit more range.
