Fat Cafe Goodmayes

Visited recently. Cafe decor is a bit too dark for my liking but nevertheless great atmosphere, menu and staff. My only other criticism is that there was a small piece of egg shell in my scrambled eggs. The cafe is under new management. I will certainly visit again.

Have driven past this place several times but got the chance to try it yesterday and I’m glad I did. The interior has a few quirky design features which were cool, the service was friendly and prompt. The Full English was really good and something I would definitely go back for (although I have heard the Desi breakfast is even better). Slightly off topic but if you like a spicy sauce then ask for their chilli sauce, it’s not like the standard fare you get at other places; it’s really good (they don’t do this anymore and their current chilli is just generic). Looking forward to trying the other items on their menu when I next visit. Update: Just tried the Desi breakfast and it lives up to the hype. This is now firmly my new breakfast place of choice Further Update: Moving from 5 to 3 stars now as breakfast portion is smaller but the main thing is the taste of the (Full English) breakfast isn’t as good as it was before and merely mediocre. The French toast/ stack would always be ordered with our breakfast but not now as it isn’t very nice anymore. Their breakfast muffin was simply below par and massively disappointing. However, their Big Mac equivalent is decent and worth a repeat order.

We went today and I was excited about having a place that serves desi and English breakfasts ... but omg .. it was sooooo disappointing! It was like Fawlty Flippin Towers! It all started from the moment I tried to open the door with a child holding each hand and the bloody door got stuck on the mat and wouldn’t open. In hindsight, I should have just taken that as a sign and turned back then and there .. *cue song: Turn Around ... * Here’s what went wrong: 1. The food took 50 mins to come. Yes. 50 mins. During the last 15 mins, my 4-year-old decided to mark every minute with, “Mama I’m hungry! Where’s our food?!” Imagine having to sit through that. 2. When it finally came, one order was missing. My husband had to wait another 15/20 mins for his food and we were faced with the mind-boggling decision of waiting for his food to arrive so we could eat together, or eat our food while it was hot and just let him eat alone. Obviously we went with the latter. We hadn’t waited 50 mins to eat cold food 😆 3. The English breakfasts were not the worst in the world but the beans were mushy and more sauce than beans, the hash browns were more like mash browns. The insides were literally sludgy paste. I have no idea how they managed to get them like that, that certainly takes a special sort of skill. The sausages were dry and overcooked and half the eggs were cooked until the yolk died from dehydration. Some of the eggs came out okay. 4. The desi breakfast - the eggs were revolting. Forget the fact that it looked like cat puke, but they were watery and mushy and had potatoes in them which was probably to bulk it all up. The daal was also mushy but tasted okay. Are you picking up on the pattern here? 5. The coffee is instant, not filter. 6. Every time we ordered a black tea, they brought a black coffee instead. 7. The loo was pretty dire and had no loo roll. I asked them for some and they actually didn’t have any and gave me kitchen towel instead. 8. The masala tea didn’t seem to have any masala in it and never came quite hot enough so turned to iced tea pretty quickly. 9. Two of the plates had chips in them. not the type you eat either 😂 Not really acceptable to serve customers in chipped crockery but tbh that was the least of my concerns. As for the pros 1. It’s halal. 2. The parathas were nice and crispy (but I have since heard that they were frozen readymade ones - not sure if this is true?) 3. The Chana masala was flavoursome although the sauce was quite thin. At this point I was just glad the chickpeas weren’t mushy 😆 4. My fave old school r&b tracks were playing in my background, which I could just about hear. 5. They offered us extra complimentary drinks after messing us about so much. I mean.. 50 mins!!! For breakfast!!! Were they waiting for the chickens to lay eggs or something?! 6. The wait staff were friendly Apparently the restaurant has only been open for 2 weeks so hopefully this was all teething issues .. or maybe it was just bad luck. Bad luck for us for the 9 reasons above, and bad luck for them doing this all to me, the serial reviewer, as a customer 😂 🙊 needless to say, I’m not in a rush to go back there any time soon!!!