Scrolling through the Uber Eats app looking for your next takeaway, you may stumble across a handful of Brooklyn Beckham's secret recipes.
David and Victoria Beckham's son launched his first-ever pop-up restaurant with a select menu featuring just five of his favourite comfort foods, which we put to the ultimate taste test. What sets Nanny Peggy's breakfast sandwich apart? And what's all the hype about Brooklyn's "secret sauce"?
A delivery to the HELLO! office on a cold and windy Wednesday afternoon answered all of our questions. Here's our honest thoughts…
What's on the Brooklyn Beckham menu?
Exclusively available on 25 and 26 January, the menu includes just five dishes: 12-hour slow-cooked Wagyu bolognese, Iberico pork and Atlantic prawn dumplings, buffalo cauliflower with Brooklyn’s homemade "secret" hot sauce, Nanny Peggy’s English breakfast sandwich, and charcoal barbecued corn-fed tikka chicken.
Nanny Peggy's family recipe
It's been nineteen years since Brooklyn started whipping up his grandmother's staple English breakfast sandwich. The star, 24, admitted: "My Nanny Peggy taught me how to make her English Breakfast sandwich when I was 5, and it’s been my favourite ever since."
Made up of five simple parts – sausage, bacon, egg and tomato sauce kept together with two slices of bread – the sandwich may sound like your everyday on-the-go breakfast. But it's far from it.
I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly enthusiastic carnivore, choosing to cook primarily vegetarian and pescatarian meals at home, but my exception tends to be a hearty fried breakfast. When those ingredients are conveniently stuffed between thick yet light, springy bread which had been grilled to achieve the perfect lines, it's a recipe for success.
Bear with me here, this is where I start sounding like an M&S Christmas advert. Each ingredient tastes high-quality, starting with the Mangalitsa streaky bacon.
Bacon has been a source of great debate among breakfast enthusiasts in the past – do you like yours crunchy, with an audible snap and a blackened edge? Or are you on the other side of the bacon debate, preferring soft, pink pork that is easily chewable? If your answer is the latter (like me) then you'll enjoy Brooklyn's culinary creation.
It's joined by perfectly herby mangalitsa and iberico sausages (no frozen own-brand supermarket sausages in sight) and a fried egg, cooked to perfection with a slightly runny yolk which mixes with the tomato sauce to create a slightly tangy flavour that delights the palette.
According to Brooklyn, his breakfast concoction is the best in the Beckham family – quite the claim! Poking fun at his footballer father, he said: "I think I make my English Breakfast sandwich better, he does make a pretty good one!"
Now back to reality. Not only is this sandwich not one for crunchy bacon fans, but it may also be disappointing for those who prefer HP sauce instead of Ketchup. Plus, you can probably get something similar at your local coffee shop for a fraction of the price.
Although presented beautifully in monochromatic packaging with chequered wrapping and a plastic container, our sandwich was a little on the cold side. Full disclaimer, this could be based on the fact we are out of the catchment area of our local delivery, meaning our courier had further to travel. But it's a risk we all take when ordering a takeaway – it's not my first room-temperature delivery and it certainly won't be my last.
Brooklyn's "secret" sauce
We doubt the budding chef will ever publicly reveal exactly what makes up the "secret" hot sauce on his Buffalo Cauliflower wings, but what we know for sure is that it contains some form of chilli spice. Put simply, Brooklyn put the hot in hot sauce, if you're to believe my colleagues!
Despite many describing the florets as "pretty spicy", I'd say the mild kick barely has time to hit the back of your throat before it is balanced by the creamy blue cheese dipping sauce, which has a smooth consistency similar to whipped feta. Sadly, the missing component of the otherwise delicious snack was the texture, which was a little soggy following the long delivery.
If you're looking for a light snack, then look no further, but those after a hearty dish may be expecting a larger portion size than just seven bitesize pieces for the £10+ price.
Overall, we're still wildly intrigued by the other four dishes on the menu after catching sight of some of Brooklyn's cooking tutorials on social media. The question is, will we ever get to taste his famous grilled cheese or Fettuccine Alfredo? Who knows, but in the meantime, we'd order his Uber Eats menu again for curiosity (and the Instagram-worthy packaging) alone.
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