Educated Flea

Busy for brunch, lunch and dinner, Educated Flea is the most petite outpost from the team that brought us Three Birds and Apiary. Like its sisters, it makes great shakes of its gluten-free friendliness and excellent vegan options; and like its sisters, it’s not easy to pigeonhole. The eclectic menu and cosily stylish space are both full of unusual personal touches, sending the message ‘love us for what we are’, and luckily it’s quite easy to. Cheerfully informal service and creative dishes such as ox cheek fritters with minted hollandaise, or confit duck with kimchi and dehydrated starfruit, brim with an idiosyncratic charm that has turned many Broughton locals into regulars. There’s a free hand with flavour, pushing classic combinations into new territories, as in a pea and mint risotto, zhooshed up with hazelnuts, carrot oil and goat's cheese. A critical eye might observe that some additions would be best subtracted, but it almost seems cruel approaching this place from that standpoint. It is, like us all, loveable in its own way.