Gooey in Manchester supposedly do the best French toast in England. That is the claim anyway. In this era of social media hype and brunching, this place combines the two perfectly. It has built of social media hype on numerous occasions for a number of their creations, and with their new venture from a bakery to a cafe, they’ve also somewhat taken the brunch scene by storm. In this post, we’ll talk about how they went from a bakery to a cafe, their famous French toast, and the other brunch dish and drinks we tried there.
Check out their website here.
Gooey: from viral bakery to viral brunch cafe
So, Gooey was initially a bakery and it was their doughnuts and cookies that really caught the eye and satisfied the tastebuds. Their doughnuts ranged from classic raspberry and vanilla doughnuts to a crowd favourite kinderella one. While their chunky cookies like the white chocolate and red velvet ones were definitely worth trying. Local and non-Manchester foodies were claiming that these were some of the best doughnuts and cookies in the city! Another recent creation they came up with was the life size Rolo! How cool is that!? The bakery was clearly a hit, but they didn’t stop there. Recently, they ventured out and opened up a cafe serving a full brunch menu full of some amazing dishes. But what got them viral this time round and from their brunch menu is the French toast!
Gooey French Toast
This Hong Kong style French toast is what got Gooey and their cafe famous. People were coming down from London just to try this. It had truly captured the imaginations of foodies all over the country. Unfortunately, when we visited they didn’t have the specific and original Gooey French Toast available. Feeling a little disappointed, something else, somewhat of a replacement caught our eye and was potentially the saving grace for our experience. It was the current special French toast they had on their menu: rhubarb and custard French toast! On the menu it states that this (along with the original French toast) will take about 20 minutes, but it is definitely worth the wait. It actually didn’t take twenty minutes, it came fairly quickly (within 10 minutes?) and it was certainly worth the wait. The texture of the French toast had a perfect combination of soft and firm with a slight crunch: it was easy to rip into (unlike many other French toasts we tried). The taste also had a wonderful combination of sweet and a slight tang from the rhubarb. The rhubarb wasn’t overpowering nor was it a distraction, it proved the perfect subtle tang. I’m a massive sweet tooth, so I think I personally would’ve loved the original one because it has a dulce de leche filling meaning it will be sweet upon sweet upon sweet. But, if that’s not for you, this will be right up your alley.
Egg Sandwich
The other item that seemed prior with people from the brunch menu was this one. The egg sandwich. Looks the part certainly, almost Japanese sando like (are they going for an East Asian inspired menu – the Hong Kong French toast and the Japanese sando). However, it did not taste good unfortunately. It lacked that creamy smooth taste that a typical Japanese sando has. And to make it worse it was a little too salty, making it borderline inedible.
Drinks
We also got a couple drinks: ice coffee and strawberry hot chocolate. The iced coffee was good, the coffee was strong, just the way I like it. The strawberry hot chocolate was unique: it tasted like drinking that strawberry filled chocolate from Quality Street or Roses. Very interesting and we did like it.
Overall, this is a place definitely worth visiting. I’d say to go for their sweet offerings: the doughnuts, cookies and French toast. And you won’t be disappointed. The egg sandwich cost us £7.50, the French toast was £12, the iced latte was £3.75 and the strawberry hot chocolate was £4.20. Prices are fair for the type of food and location. It was very busy when we visited and so we had to wait about 15 minutes before we got seated. You order using a QR code. No one actually came up to us until the food was being brought to the table, which felt a bit strange and distanced. What if we had a question about the menu? Which we actually did when we saw that the original French toast was not on the menu. Nonetheless, maybe this is the future.
Getting There:
Google Maps Location link
