Brunch @ Sea Containers, Mondrian Hotel

Restaurant names always intrigue me, some are simple, some extravagant. I’ve been meaning to check out this restaurant simply because of it’s name and it’s design. Simple things like that attract me to a place. Sea Containers – it is what it says on the tin (or, in this case, container!) literally a hotel that looks like a sea container from the outside and what better place to go to on a somewhat sunny day by the Thames.
It was one of my besties’ birthday so, as is annual tradition, we booked for brunch and went down to Mondrian Hotel in Waterloo and headed down for a spot of yummy food. The brunch menu was decent, and what’s more the chicken is halal. So what do you do when there’s halal chicken? You order everything that has chicken in it.. obviously!

Mondrian Hotel is so cute and has a few Insta-worthy places for sure. Sea Containers is the name of their restaurant and there are 2 sides to the restaurant – one for brunch and the other for afternoon tea. The restaurant was somewhat dimly lit but there was a lot of natural light coming from the outdoor areas so was all good. It seemed unnecessarily loud in the restaurant though, almost so loud that a group of girls next to us asked one of the waiters if they could take a photo for them 3 times! (Bless!)

We started by ordering a mocktail (1 of just 3 mocktails on the menu). Here is the Hellow Mello – their version of the Pina Cola.

If you guys follow me on Instagram, you’ll know my true obsession of chicken and waffles. It’s definitely an acquired taste but I would take them over a burger any day! So when I saw I saw the menu, needless to say chicken and waffles were the first thing I saw! So I came and conquered! More like.. she came, she saw, she ordered, she ate!
My friend got the Roast Corn-Fed Chicken (which served 2 people and was a whopping £45), and my other friend got the Smoked Avocado on Charred Toast (because let’s be honest no brunch is complete without an avotoast!). There were no pancakes on the menu or I would have been on that pronto.

The service was very slow.. there seemed to be enough staff but a lot of them weren’t really doing much. We waited almost 30-40 mins for our food. But when our food did eventually come it all looked so good it was all forgotten.. or so we thought!

Let’s start with the chicken roast – I don’t think I’ve ever had a roast in a restaurant before as most of the places that serve Sunday roasts aren’t actually halal. But it looked amazing, but was definitely too big a dish. Just looking at the size, we looked at each other thinking OOPS! We should have ordered this on its own. The chicken itself was lovely.. so moist and juicy. And along with the gravy and Yorkshire puddings as big as one of my hands, it truly felt like a Sunday roast!

SO, let’s talk about my chicken and waffles. They came as a waffle-chicken sandwich – i.e. waffle, chicken, waffle. It came with a side of ketchup, Sriracha sauce and maple syrup (weird combo but I went with it) The waffles were slightly burnt and actually too crispy to eat, our waiter very kindly got me some more waffles though to make up for it (even though by the time I had already told him they were burnt I had almost had half of it), the chicken and maple syrup was great but even with the new waffles they weren’t the greatest waffles, so that was a bit of a disappointment.

My friend’s avotoast on the menu said it came with a hard boiled egg, but she requested for them to come with poached eggs instead. When it came, they got the eggs wrong. We had to ask them to get her poached eggs, which was annoying as they’d already taken so long to arrive anyways.

We ordered 1 dessert to share (knowing that we had ordered a cake for my bestie’s birthday) so we got the Lava Cake, which came with Guinness ice cream. We asked for the Guinness ice cream to be replaced with plain vanilla ice cream. This didn’t happen and it came with the Guinness ice cream, if we didn’t noticed they would have fed us Guinness when we specifically said we wanted the non-alcoholic ice cream! When they brought us another with the correct ice cream, the lava cake itself wasn’t bad but the melted chocolate inside was a little harder, unmelted by this point. Still a decent dessert though.

 

Now, I know that singing isn’t everyone’s forte but they brought out the cutest cake and the worst half-attempt at birthday singing! I mean just do it properly or don’t, it was kind of embarrassing! But we made it work so was fine. After that, I asked for the bill, and again and again! It’s as if they didn’t want to get paid, in the end I had to bring the HR Manager in me out and got stern. (Oooops! Sorry, no one needs to see that side of me! It’s not a pretty sight)

 

Overall, I was really disappointed with the service. The hotel and restaurant are both so pretty and the food was decent too, but the service really put a downer on everything. The eggs mix up and the waffles were fine, what pushed me over the edge was the Guinness ice cream and the bill. Right over the edge! If they just fixed up their service I would have felt totally different about it.

Food – 6 out of 10 
Service – 4 out of 10
Atmosphere – 6 out of 10 
Experience – 5 out of 10

Overall, giving Brunch @ Sea Containers Restaurant a total TLH score of 5 out of 10.

Address: Mondrian Hotel, 20 Upper Ground, London SE1 9PD
Website: https://www.seacontainersrestaurant.com/
Halal Status: Only chicken is halal but they do serve alcohol
Closest Station: Waterloo or Southwark (Jubilee Line)