Brunch Club - September: Tom's Kitchen and the Docklands Museum of London

Last Sunday was our next planned brunch club - this time it was my better half's turn to choose our exhibition for the day. Being a boy, he went for the Bridges exhibition at the Docklands branch of the Museum of London, and so I chose Tom's Kitchen in Canary Wharf for brunch.

We headed for food first (of course) and arrived just before the midday rush; it was nice to have a few minutes in relative calm before it started getting busier. I started off with a cucumber, apple and mint juice which was delicious. I am a huge fan of fresh apple juice, but it can often be a bit sharp and so this was a perfect combination as the cucumber and mint tempered any sharpness. For food we both decided to go for a bagel - mine with poached eggs and sausage and his with scrambled eggs and bacon. We also opted to share a couple of slices of toasted brioche, although this didn't arrive until we had almost finished our bagels which was annoying. I found my food fine. There was nothing wrong with it and you could tell all the components were of pretty good quality, but it didn't really taste of a huge amount. My poached eggs were also slightly overdone, but when I say slightly I mean literally 20 seconds so perhaps I am being picky.

We then headed to the museum. Neither of us had visited before so weren't sure what to expect, but the museum was actually much bigger than we had imagined. We headed up to the third floor to where the bridges exhibition started and it was actually much more interesting than I anticipated, particularly as someone who has never shown a massive amount of interest in the history of the bridges over the Thames! Each section of information was really detailed but without being either overwhelming or patronising and I definitely learnt a few bits and pieces. One thing I would say though, is that the whole museum seemed a bit higgledy-piggledy - it wasn't clear where one exhibition finished and one began, and I understand that the point of the museum is that it is a sort of rolling history of London, but we went from reading about bridges to reading about slavery without realising we'd gone from one part to another. It also felt that the bridges section seemed to peter out at a certain point - there was information about the last century, but it was interspersed with sections about other parts (WW1 and WW2 for example), which wasn't exactly what we were expecting or had come to see. That being said though, it was all really interesting and would make a great place to take someone who wanted an overview of London from the last few hundred years.

Entrance to the museum is free. It is walking distance from a couple of stations but we went via Canary Wharf, which is on the jubilee line and the DLR.