I HAVE FOUND MY NEW FAVOURITE BREAKFAST!

I’ve said it about twenty seven thousand times since they closed in January but I loved Vanilla Pod breakfasts and I am still, to this day, genuinely sad they closed.

However, I have now had the pleasure of eating at V&H Cafe on Holland Road, Hove. They are a quiet, unassuming cafe on the corner of Palmeira Square. Whilst their grey awning and colour theme is very sophisticated, it does make them blend into the background a little. That said, they do seem to have a loyal clientele and I can totally understand why.

V&H is a sweet little cafe who pride themselves on supporting local businesses rather than competing with them which I think is a great ethos to get behind. They use other local businesses to supply their bread and cakes, for example.

I went for the full breakfast which consisted of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, gluten free sausages and homemade beans.

Having a gluten free sausage as standard is such a good idea – so many people are gluten intolerant so this is a great way for them not to be excluded and people who aren’t gluten intolerant aren’t going to miss out on anything.

When ordering, you are given the options of poached, scrambled or fried for your eggs and three options for your toast: chewy brown, gluten free or white. I opted for gluten free toast and poached eggs.

The plate was heated (props for that alone) and the contents were piping hot and freshly cooked when they arrived at the table. They also provide Heinz tomato ketchup and HP Brown sauce – extra brownie points for that too. The egg / sausage willy on my plate gave me a chuckle.

The sausage was big, meaty and juicy – cooked perfectly. The perfect gourmet sausage. The bacon was not over-salty and a little too crispy for my liking but tasty and they weren’t stingy with one piece of bacon (who actually does that?!). The gluten free toast was really nice – from Sussex Bread Company. The herby mushrooms and tomatoes were really fresh and seasoned nicely, personal preference the tomato could been a little more charred. The homemade baked beans were AMAZING. They were full of flavour and had a bit of a kick behind them to wake up the senses.

And finally, the pièce de résistance – the poached eggs – two perfectly poached eggs. They were some happy hens, the eggs were bursting with flavour and the yolk was really rich.

So basically I have now run out of adjectives to describe how good each item is. It was around £9.00 so it’s a top of the range breakfast. That said, I brunch at the weekends regularly and am happier to pay that to get a good fill than pay a fiver and be hungry again in an hour once the oil has dropped down your digestive system.

It also just so happens to be around the corner from my flat and is dog-friendly. They are going to be seeing a lot more of me. They offer a brunch menu as well as deli style sandwiches which all looked really appetising and they have an ever changing specials board – follow them on Instagram, it will make you hungry daily.

Have you eaten at V&H? Anything else you recommend trying? Their eggs and avo option was very tempting… next time!

the wee food blogger 💛