Brunch at TW Food

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A friend of ours recently emailed us to ask what restaurant was on Walden Street in Cambridge - she had read a great review of the brunch at this place but couldn't remember its name. We live in the general vicinity, know Walden Street well, and the only restaurant other than the weird cafe that offers sushi, noodles, coffee and ice cream is TW Food.

We'd been to TW Food once for dinner - it's an intimate and elegant restaurant in walking distance from our place. While the meal we had there a while back was perfectly pleasant, it wasn't exactly a spot we felt a pressing need to return. Their brunch menu which is relatively new was intriguing, so we invited our friends who planted the idea to give the brunch a try.

I don't normally drink before noon, but the cocktails were too tempting to pass up. I ordered the mimosa with blood orange instead of regular orange juice since that seemed like an acceptably light cocktail for a morning meal, but I regretted not trying the "Crimson Haiku" since I'm a sucker for both sake and ginger beer. I stuck to just one libation and our friend ordered the "Sangre de Maria", which looked like a fancy Bloody Mary, so that I wasn't drinking alone.

Once we'd placed our order, our servers brought us a lovely platter of bread, chocolate pecan scones, and warm apple bran muffins with soft butter and orange marmalade. It was the right amount to nibble on while waiting for our food, which seemed to take a while but wasn't surprising since the restaurant was completely full and wasn't a big deal to us since we had a lot to catch up on. Here's the dishes we tried when our food arrived:

• Smoked kobe brisket corned beef hash: in case that didn't sound rich enough as is, it came with fried beef tongue fritters, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, as well as a giant slice of brioche toast that took up almost half the plate. The egg was perfectly poached, and there was a nice salad to offset the richness of the dish. 
• Feuillantine of wild mushrooms: this came in a puff pastry with a compote of vidalia onions, slow-poached eggs, and black trumpet and morel mushroom cream.
• Torrijas: this was fancy french toast, with brioche marinated in oloroso sherry, served with wine poached apricots and vermont maple syrup. 

Overall, we found our meals to be very tasty - on the rich side given what we'd ordered, but the portion sizes were on the smaller side so at least it wasn't gut-busting. The walk home probably helped the digestion and the proximity should encourage us to become regulars at a new brunch place.


T.W. Food
377 Walden Street, Cambridge
(617) 864-4745