On Thursday I headed off to my fave place to eat, Turtle Bay, with one of my bestest friends to enjoy a bottomless brunch. Now, it is very rare for me to get a day off from being mum and I do love a good cocktail, so as you can guess I was rather excited for the bottomless-ness of it all!

Obviously in between me enjoying the brunch and finishing off half term on a high with the kid, Boris has been on the old telebox again and announced lockdown take 2. As he did this before I got the chance to write about my fun brunch experience (due to all the half term parenting and what not, I only get the one day off on the parenting front and to be fair that was only a half day) I was left in a quandary over what to do in regards to the review. Should I wait until everything had re-opened again and you guys could actually go and check it out for yourselves or not.

Well the thought of not getting it written up bothered me immensely, I don’t like having unfinished jobs hanging over my head. Also I had such a great time I just really wanted to share it, besides you’ve got a few days you could nip in and get it booked. I’m pretty sure they’ll be offering takeaway services again too, not that you can takeaway alcohol, thanks Boris, so none of the cocktails but all of the delicious food.

Now, bottomless brunch is epically good value. £27 per person for food and all the cocktails you want. You don’t have to have cocktails, there’s beer on offer, mocktails and prosecco too, but if you’ve ever been to Turtle Bay you’ll know it’s all about their delicious cocktails.

Food wise you get to choose anything from the breakfast menu, roti or burger menus. It’s a hard choice, really tough. We both opted for roti, I had a delicious Sweetcorn Fritter Roti and my friend opted for the Chicken Roti. With hindsight I wish I’d gone for one of the bigger options from the breakfast menu, not because my food wasn’t delicious, it really was, I flipping love a sweetcorn fritter, I just could have done with more food to go with my excessive cocktail drinking.

Bottomless brunch comes with a 2 hour time slot for the enjoyment of the cocktails and unlike some other establishments that offer bottomless brunch, you don’t have to stick to the one cocktail. You can have something different every time, so we did. The Bahama Mama is one of my known favourites so that’s where I started with some caribbean banana goodness, but I tried some new ones for me too, like the Beachcombers Zombie, a delightful yet very strong little number with a pleasant aniseed kick thanks to the absinthe. The UB40 with red, red wine (sorry couldn’t help it) was a lovely warming treat and almost felt a bit festive. The Ting A Ling was a real hit, a light and refreshing gin, prosecco and elderflower mix.

I could go on, but that would just be embarrassing for me.

Service as always was amazing, with my favourite waiter Rolly on hand to guide us through the cocktail choices and make sure we were always topped up it was an easy and fun experience. When we couldn’t decide on our next drink he picked for us.

Now I know you’ll all want to know about the precautions they had taken for covid. This was the first time I had visited since they re-opened after the first lockdown, ironic that they will have to shut again. Our table had a plastic screen along the side of it that was open to the restaurant and I found that reassuring. I did notice that not all tables had this and I couldn’t tell you why ours did and not others, but I liked that ours did and would choose one of those tables over and above others and that can be requested when you book.

There was also a clearly marked one way system in place if you need to visit the bathroom, which meant you wouldn’t be crossing the paths of too many people. This is difficult in a restaurant but they pulled it off well. Obviously you have to wear masks when you are up and away from your table too. The staff all had either masks or visors on as well and I know they have daily health checks.

I was surprised at how full the restaurant was, for two reasons. One, I was just surprised to see that many people out and about on a Thursday lunch time but I also thought they would have left some empty tables for distancing purposes. What they had done instead was make sure that we were back to back with the next table, so as we weren’t facing them at all it felt ok. Tables have been moved further apart as well, though I can’t say I noticed this, but I guess I wasn’t really looking either.

The trays with sauces and cutlery were being wiped down and sanitised between each use and I could see just how busy they were making sure everything was clean and ready to go. There were also individual hand sanitisers on each table, as well as a big one by the door they were asking people to use on entry.

We had an amazing time and are already planning our return with the third person from our little group as a pre-christmas treat and get together. Plus I finally filled my Turtle Bay loyalty card with turtles so I’m looking forward to using that!I’ve got everything crossed that they will be open again before Christmas ready to accomodate us again. But I do know that they had already planned to offer their Christmas menu both in restaurant and as a takeaway option, hurrah.

Disclosure – we were gifted a voucher to go towards the cost of our meal in return for a review. All thoughts, opinions and images are my own.