I recently stumbled across a post on Instagram with a picture of Rhubarb & Custard pancakes, this excited me a lot as I’m pretty fond of rhubarb & custard sweets, rhubarb crumble with custard and even rhubarb gin. I’d never really seen anything quite like this on a menu. I headed over to the page it was posted on and discovered Milk, an independent cafe in Balham, south west London.

A sucker for the latest fads & an unashamed huge fan of a hipster cafe I decided to head down to Milk to see if I could get my hands on the delicious-looking food I had seen in their photos.

We arrived at 10:30am to see a queue of about 10 people outside, but decided to wait as I’d come all the way for some delicious pancakes, so I wasn’t going to go home with an empty stomach!

We were seated after about a 15 minute wait and ordered coffee & juice. The coffee was possibly the nicest I’ve ever had and the same could be said for the Lauren smoothie (strawberry, banana & mango).

I couldn’t see the pancakes on the menu so I began scanning the room to see if they were on a specials board when a waiter tapped me on the shoulder and said “the pancakes are our special today, they’re great” –  he must have known what I was looking for!

We ordered The Convict – english muffin, sausage, bacon, egg, hash brown, cheese & hangover sauce, along with the pancake special of buckwheat pancakes with burnt blood orange, blood orange marmalade cream and linden flower syrup.

When the food arrived the pancakes (£9.20) really looked amazing. They were presented with burnt blood oranges, candied orange, orange jelly and marmalade cream. I have to admit they didn’t taste as I was hoping. I’m used to extremely sweet, fluffy pancakes, whereas these were quite dry/dense in comparison. I have never eaten buckwheat pancakes before so it might be just something I’m not used to, but they just didn’t taste as fresh as I was hoping for. The blood orange was a really unusual flavour and everything tasted nice, however the texture of the pancakes sort of let this dish down for me.

I generally tend to go for one of the sweet items such as pancakes or waffles when it comes to eating out for brunch as I have a massive sweet tooth, however The Convict (£9.50) made me think that I had made the wrong choice.

While the pancakes looked wonderful, The Convict really won on taste. It tasted so delicious, everything worked well together. I’m not sure exactly what the “hangover sauce” was but it was yummy! Would highly recommend this dish to anyone thinking of visiting Milk.

The whole experience at Milk was lovely, the staff were really nice and I loved the atmosphere. I didn’t mind queueing, and the food and drinks were all delicious, it’s just a shame that the buckwheat pancakes weren’t exactly what I was expecting (I think that’s all down to my personal preference). It’s worth noting that if you’re thinking of heading down to Milk for breakfast/brunch and fancy the pancakes, they seem to change the flavour quite often. Best to check their instagram beforehand to see what the special is!

Where?
Milk
18-20 Bedford Hill
London
SW12 9RG

When?
Monday: 8am-5pm
Tuesday: 8am-5pm
Wednesday: 8am-5pm
Thursday: 8am-5pm, 6:30-11pm
Friday: 8am-5pm, 6:30-11pm
Saturday: 8am-5pm, 6:30-11pm
Sunday: 9am-5pm