When: 10am-1pm, seven days a week.
How much? £9.95 for the Mouth of the Mersey, a “classic full on English breakfast”.
*Read: Top 10 Breakfasts in Liverpool
Nice place to start the day? Very pleasant. The Old Blind School, or TOBS as it affectionately knows itself, is a restaurant and bar opened last summer following the conversion of a 19th century building formerly used as a trade union centre, police station and, you’ve guessed it, blind school.
Upstairs there is a restaurant but breakfast is served in the ground floor bar, with the choice of two rooms. Both are sunny, spacious and cool, with high, handsome windows overlooking the aftermath of Hardman Street.
*Read: Review: The Old Blind School
What’s on the plate? Two thick slices of bacon, one sausage, two eggs (cooked any old way you like), a heap of saute potatoes, one field mushroom, half a large tomato. Plus a choice of toast.
Whether you can deem this a “classic” fry up, without black pudding, is debatable, but then the cunning devils have covered themselves by calling it a “full on English” not a “full English”.
Th Mouth of The Mersey - a full on EnglishAny good? Curly rashers of good back bacon are grilled to a perfect crisp finish at the narrow end, while the “handmade northern banger” from is a mouthful in more than one sense: fat, juicy and well-seasoned. Fried eggs possess yolks just runny, the whites crinkly and crunchy on the edges. A dark gilled field mushroom adds more flavour with not a trace of squishy unpleasantness.
And the downside? An absence of black pudding and beans was compensated for by rather too many sauteed spuds. If we're quibbling, then the decorative half of beef tomato could have benefited from some imangination and the slice of white bloomer toast arrived rather on the cool side.
Bang for your buck? It’s not the priciest full English in town, that honour would seem to go to the nearby London Carriage Works, but a tenner is still a lot to part with before the day has even properly started. But no question, it’s quality breakfast gear.
Eggs Benedict (£5.95)What if you don’t want a full English, or even a "full on" English? An extensive breakfast menu includes Manx kippers (£4.95), kedgeree (£4,95), porridge (£2.50), bacon and sausage sandwiches (£3.95), Belgian waffles (with blueberries and strawberries, £5.95; with maple glazed bacon, £6.50). All sorts of omelettes and French toast.
We tried the Eggs Benedict (£5.95), a brioche muffin topped with two fat, textbook poached eggs, over more of that bacon. It comes with lashings, lashings of creamy hollandaise pepped up by flecks of fresh tarragon. Could it have been a bit warmer? Yes it could.
Would you go back? Not unless on someone else's exes account. However the weekend might be a different story when you can ditch the PG Tips for an "acceptable" Champagne cocktail to wash down your bangers.
If you are really in the mood, they will also uncork a bottle of fizz (beginning with Ant' Orsola prosecco at £20.95 and going all the way up). And let's get it clear, if you are knocking back several glasses of Cristal at £189 a pop, first thing in the morning, you aren't going to worry too much about forking out a few quid over the odds for a fry up.
NB: All scored Confidential reviews are paid for by the company, never the restaurant or a PR outfit. Critics dine unannounced and their opinions are completely independent of any commerical relationships.
The Old Blind School, Hardman Street, L1 9AX. 0151 709 8002. Website
Breakfast food: 7/10*
Morning ambience: 3/5
Morning service: 4/5
Total 14/20
*Bacon 8/10, sausage 8/10, eggs 8/10, saute potatoes 7/10, mushroom 7/10, tomato 5/10. Eggs Benedict: Brioche 7/10, poached eggs 8/10; hollandaise 7/10 (more if it had been warmer)
Venues are rated against the best examples of their kind: Breakfast places in this instance
1-5: Stay in bed; 6-9: Go for a brew and a fag; 10-13: Break out the statins; 14-15: If someone else is paying; 16-17: Very good to egg-ceptional; 18-20: Good day sunshine
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