This café has become known for one thing almost as much as its food: the queue outside. At pretty much any time of day, there’s someone waiting to get in.
If you want to know what Balham values on a Sunday morning, it’s most definitely brunch.
By 10am, Hildreth Street is already filling up with people waiting for their ice lattes and nowhere particularly urgent to be. Milk cafe has been attracting this sort of crowd since it opened in 2012, and despite more than a decade of popularity, it still doesn’t take bookings.
I joined the queue to see what all the fuss is about and eventually, got a table. I ordered the Sweet Maria – sweetcorn fritters, halloumi, avocado and something called kasundi, which sounds like a small, aggressive mammal from the Amazon but is, thankfully, a sauce.
I also added scrambled eggs for £3.20, which felt slightly cheeky given the main dish was already £12.20. Two iced lattes came to £9.60, followed by a 10 per cent service charge of £3.12.
- Sweet Maria: £12.20
- Scrambled eggs: £3.20
- 2 x iced lattes: £9.60
- Service charge (10%): £3.12
- Total: £28.12
Milk does have plenty going for it. The food is creative. the coffee is good and there’s a reason people keep coming back.
The menu isn’t especially generous to vegetarians, though. There are options, but they’re not always immediately obvious, so you end up doing the culinary equivalent of reading the terms and conditions: squinting at the menu and trying to work out exactly what comes without meat.
And this is where I think Milk has a very good alternative sitting practically on its doorstep.
A door down on Hildreth Street is Brickwood, an Australian-style café that has been quietly doing its own thing since 2013.
Brickwood is a lot more laid-back, with good coffee, all-day brunch and a menu that gives you more to work with. It was founded by Australian Jayke Mangion, and the Balham branch has been a fixture on Hildreth Street for years. And yet the queue outside Milk will often stretch past it.
I have always preferred Brickwood. The service is warm without being overbearing, the food is generous – the creamy mushrooms is my personal fave.
That is perhaps the difference between the two. Milk is the destination brunch. Brickwood is the café you might actually make your regular.
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