Restaurant review: Allans, Hay's Galleria

Last Saturday, my fiancee wanted to buy me breakfast. Both of our favourite greasy spoon cafes were closed though, so we tried a new French bistro at Hay's Galleria (near London Bridge) called Allans. Why Allans? Well, it was nearest to our usual breakfast hunch. It looked alright from the outside. And a guy very convincingly, when asked "Do you serve breakfast?" said "Yes." then gave us a tasty bit of crepe with sugar to lure us in. Hurrah, we thought! But never had we been so wrong. Never.

We sat down upstairs in a cozy but distressingly kitchy and faux seating area, full of couches, mis-matched chandeliers (some of them with bits of wiring sticking out) and trapped tourists. We took one glance at the menu, then ordered two vegetarian breakfasts from the nice but awfully shy waitress. She gave us some 'freshly squeezed orange juice' which was most definitely not fresh. It came straight from a pack and it had a sugary aftertaste. Almost like, well, store-bought orange juice with sugar. Another far grumpier waitress came quickly, served us two plates of the most distressed version of an English breakfast ever seen, without even a word or friendly smile. She nodded, then left, as if to say: "Ahh, yu zilly peeple, orderink an Engleez brek-fast at mon love-ly Frènch restaurant, I will teech yu un lesson! I will zerve yu... an English monztrozity! Your fa-zer was a hamstèr et your mo-zer zmelled of le elderberries!"

The plate contained the following: 1 deep-fried store-bought tasteless vegetarian burger (instead of the vegetarian sausage on the menu); 1 big oilspil of beans that when tasted turned out to be extremely acidic and actually made us wonder whether 1) the stuff had gone off, or 2) the stuff had gone off and they had tried to mask this by adding a cup of vinegar; 1 pile of obviously tinned, grey-greenish, slightly warmed mushrooms that were especially foul-tasting (a bit like the beans, actually); 1 tiny omelet (this was one tasty omelet, we must admit, but we had ordered scrambled eggs); 1 very sad pile of iceberg lettuce with a slice of cucumber (instead of the tomato that was on the menu); 2 slices of brown toast with a cup of butter. We tried a little bit of each, then looked at one another, and raised one eyebrow (a move amusingly repeated almost exactly by the couple that came in after us and ordered the same).

When we told the shy-but-nice waitress, "We're sorry, but this tastes off," she did not attempt to argue, but immediately said: "Would you like something else?" Good service, that. We ordered two crepes, hoping for the lovely morsels that lured us into this odd restaurant in the first place. Then the grumpy lady came to our table, and with a graceful French arm movement produced a plate of cake. "On ze house," she muttered, then left. The cake, it turned out, was not as acidic as the beans. It was a bit... odd. Perhaps we were barbarians, under-appreciating a carefully produced French delica-zy, but we could've sworn there was something sour in the cake as well.

A few minutes after we finished our cake (in the meantime entertaining ourselves by observing a teenager handing out flyers for the cafe in the laziest way possible) we got our crepes. They were OK: the Nutella and banana one was mostly Nutella with some crepe, the plain banana crepe was alright. They turned out to cost about 5 pounds each, which was a bit pricey for our portion size. But, well, let's be honest and give praise where praise is due: the crepes didn't taste of vinegar.