Mess Cafe

Had lunch here last week with baby and friend with baby, nice and affordable, great value. Nothing too much trouble, they happily provided a seasoning free one egg omelette for the baby. Would come again. Only downside was they only had 1 highchair.

good mushroom omelette. good value for money. amazing strawberry or vanilla milkshakes on £1.80

Favorite choice for breakfast or brunch. You can get a full fry up for a fiver and it is really tasy. They do these lovely sauteed potatoes that will cure any hangover right off. The milkshakes are a good shout and so are the burgers at lunch. It is always busy, so be ready to get cosy in one of the booths. Worth sticking it out as you don’t get much for a fiver round hackney these days…

Very good breakfast with affordable prize. I come every 2,3 week even though I don’t live near there. You can’t find anywhere good quality of food with the same amount of money.

Mess Café easily offers one of the best breakfast deals for price and quality. For a quick £5 you get a full English breakfast (with veggie and vegan options) with tea or coffee served up somewhat quickly *insert massive sigh of relief after many £9, 3 hour breakfast experiences*.
Definitely try it out if you’re looking for a simple, good value breakfast in East London, as it’s not always easy to find!

I really wanted to give this place 4 stars for consistency, but then my friend found a hair in her scrambled eggs and it sort of put me off…
Regardless, Mess Café usually delivers. A cut above your average greasy spoon, I can order a considerably posher breakfast of poached eggs and avo with rye bread, accompanied by smoothie for under a tenner.
Sure the crowd might be a bit pretentious/​mid two day bender, but the staff certainly aren’t.

Went in for breakfast yesterday morning, it was a treat… for £5 you get fried egg, sausage, 2 slices of bacon, fried potatoes, mushrooms, a slice of toast & a scrumptious tomato with basil on it, they are really good & if you don’t like something you can swap it for no extra cost — not like Dalston Lane café, where you have to pay extra. I switched the mushrooms for beans as mushrooms are wrong & you can’t have a breakfast without beans. You also get a tea or coffee to wash it down with. The coffee is real coffee too, none of that instant rubbish you sometimes get palmed off with.
The service is good & there are newspapers for you to read, great if you are hungover & incapable of conversation.
Downside is that you sometimes have to queue for a significant amount of time for a table… But it’s well worth the wait.
Other mild annoyance was the lady sat behind me having breakfast on her own, I only know she was dining alone as she felt the need to call everyone in her phone book to let them know that she was… She also spread the news of Friday nights conquest, really wanted to tell her that it’s very unlikely that she will hear from him again… He’ll call you… He didn’t give you his number for a reason… Hopefully I’m wrong though & they will live happily ever after & be comfortable in silence eating their breakfasts!

The best within the immediate area, but take a walk up to Dalston Lane Café for a step up in quality.

I was last here about three weeks ago. Reasonable prices indeed, and vegan-​friendly, although the menu is not particularly exciting. The service was quite good. The only problem is that I absolutely hate waiting for a table, so I would never come here at busy times or on weekends.

I have been wanting to come here for a while — it is always busy whenever I walk by and when a friend was pining for a greasy spoon I suggested this place.
the Café was recently refurbed and has a pleasant, light interior. The service was friendly if a bit slow. I would have expected more from the food — mind you, there is nothing wrong with it but it is not spectacular. The portions are mid-​sized and most English breakfast options do not include baked beans.
An OK experience but I won’t be back anytime soon. Perhaps I am just spoiled by the Royal Café in Hampstead, one of the best greasy spoons I’ve ever been to.

My friends call this place a ‘posh spoon’ as opposed to a greasy one. The breakfast potatoes are delish but the rest of the food is a bit standard. It’s cheap and filling though but gets rammed at weekends.
Good for hangovers.

I don’t really understand the other reviews here, the food is alright, but not brilliant, usually accompanied by soggy white toast. Also the staff are miserable and it’s not worth the bother of having to queue or squeeze into booths next to annoyed looking strangers at the weekends. These booths are also uncomfortable. It is going through some kind of renovation at the moment so things may change. Oh, and when they removed their old sign they dumped it round the back on a side street (where I live). This is bad, and also probably illegal. There are other, better cafes nearby.

Delicous breakfast!
Arrived about 10am on a Saturday and it was suprisingly quiet! Ordered my Mess Breakfast and white coffee at £4.70. The café is light, clean and has a good range of seating.
The coffee arrived well was nothing to scream about. It was basically the bland usual caf coffee but saying that, it was the one that was free with the brekkie — I’m sure their other coffees are pretty good.
The food. One word. AMAZING.
Egg: perfectly cooked, Bacon: crispy but not too OTT, crunchy potatoes, nicely seasoned ‘shrooms and a good tomato. Oh and a suprisingly good sausage. One of the best brekkies in London and just under a fiver it’s affordable.
Travel: SO easy to get to — Overground to Hackney Central and a 2 minute walk.
I’ll post some photos tomorrow.

Been going here for years however have moved out of London now, Still think its one of the best Café’s i’ve been to. The milkshakes and burgers are great as well as the classic Mess Breakfast. They should open a branch in Tunbridge Wells.

Mess is a great café,. wish it was open longer I could eat that breakfast anytime.

Best breakfast in east London and everyone knows it. This means at weekends you can sometimes wait 15 minutes just to get a seat! Service is understandably a little slow at these times but stick with it, it’s worth the wait. In the week it’s much calmer and their lunch menu is excellent too.

Just got back from brunch
I don’t think my partner or I was very impressed. The food was acceptable, but not good enough that I would recommend it to anyone.
The orange juice was no good and the shakes were pretty awful too (I would gladly pay the extra two £s and get a shake at Diner)

This is a great little chilled café where you can relax and drink a milkshake and eat some yummy food like a cream cheese bagel while reading a paper which they supply (always bonus in my books). The seating is quite nice, very diner like.
The staff are lovely and the atmosphere is super relaxed. They have a very nice menu and although I’ve never tried it the vegetarian breakfast looks seriously delicious.

The Mess café lies somewhere between a workman’s café and a trendy café, which, at times, I find is just the experience I am after. Honest and not pretentious in the slightest way.
The thing I love about the most is the seating arrangements. There is a combination of booth seating and standard table and chairs seating. There is something I really love about booth seating, I think it is the way it feels like an American diner. I think I like these particular seats because the varnished wooden booth seats give it a slight English twist.
Also in American diner style, the portions of food are huge. For a favourite food item, I am torn between the Mess breakfast and the vege burger served with chips. I have found both to dishes to be completely satisfying. I think I would recommend the Breakfast at anytime of the day, but the burger and very large portion of chips after 11am. Feel free not to accept my recommendation and just go for the burger at any time of the day.
The coffee is not great, But if a really froth cappuccino is your kind of thing then go right ahead and get one. I would personally go for a cafetiere because there is not too much room for error.

I am not a massive fan of Mess Café. I can’t seem to establish what makes it different to the rake of similarly stodgey but cheaper greasy spoons around here. Yes the staff are friendly. Yes they do stock the Observer to read with your vegan breakfast. But you may have to fight someone called Crispin for the Review section. And that’s before you’ve been forced to shoulder charge his civil partner Jem for a space at a table.
I am very cynical. The weekend crowds do not lie. I will admit that Mess has successfully positioned itself a notch above your average ‘egg and chips’ van in the comptetive greasy Hackney hangover market. Its just that that notch doesn’t seem significantly large enought to warrant queuing for 15 minutes to eat the same old muck.
But that’sjust my opinion, and stuff…