First Bite: Castle Street Townhouse

NOT complaining or anything, but these days you can’t move in downtown Liverpool without being plied with breakfasts, brunches and booze. 

Gone, on Castle Street, are those quaint little sandwich shops and empty listed office blocks; snapped up by bar and restaurant owners of varying allure. 

This is exactly the sort of egg that you want to go to work on

Greggs - and its stoic steak bake - survives; a ground zero among the steel, glass and reclaimed oak.

The very newest neighbour, Castle St Townhouse, is brought to you by some experienced hands - the team behind Circo, Albert Dock’s freakery funspot.

But there are no fire eaters or crazy contortionists in this polished mirrored and pillared refit which has just opened its doors in what was a dull, grey solicitor’s unit next to the still vacant Bank of England. 

“By combining the ‘three Bs’ (breakfast, brunch and bar), the new venue aims to blur the lines between social meetings and cocktail nights,” it says here.

One brunch offers bottomless prosecco for £35. However, this IS Liverpool and  bottomless, perhaps wisely, means two hours. Yes, that's right ladies, eventually the bottom will be, er, up. 

“We are all different people at different times of the day,” explains the blurb: at 8am the “school runner”, at 1.30pm the “legal eagle” and morphing, by 8pm, into the “social butterfly. 

How very exhausting. But at least conveyancing fees are no longer on the menu.

It’s a dance that head chef Martin Simm, right,  almost certainly knows, having cut the mustard and much else at Hanover Street Social, Host and The Quarter, all solid city centre favourites. He’s also cooked in Spain, Sydney and Melbourne.

But often it’s the small things that are worth zoning in on and black pudding with a hash, poached egg and Hollandaise
(£6), looked just the thing when Confidential wandered into CST as it was throwing it down one morning last week. 

This is exactly the sort of egg that you want to go to work on.  It crowns a crisp hash (rissole in your mum’s day) of mash with chives, garlic, shallots, cheese, salt and hand slip of perky white pepper.  Perch it all on a slab of fat, dark Stornoway black pudding and gloop some rich, buttery Hollandaise over the top.

When Saturday dawned, and armed with the knowledge, we gave the hash a bash in the Confidential kitchen. 

It delighted all who sampled it, even if it took considerably longer to shove together and its dishevelled appearance was second only to a lover of bottomless prosecco, AWOL on a Friday afternoon.

Simm’s extensive breakfast menu is bacon, eggs chorizo jam, mushroom and sourdough and pancakes all over. For the undecided,  a “Townhouse Tier” combines bitesize brekkie portions, fruit and smoothie shots (£15).

High noon, and it’s time for shin beef with kale and carrot celeriac; hake fillet with spinach hash, avocado, chilli and chorizo and “rumpette” steak and fries. 

The finest hour will have to wait another day, another dollar. But until you hear otherwise, the hash is a keeper.