Tower Bridge Lunch Reviews II: Leon

Today I went to Leon for lunch, which appealed as it’s schtick is allegedly doing healthy fast food.

Ordering experience

I actually didn’t realise until I went into the shop that they had self-service screens that you order from, before collecting your order when your name is called, à la Maccies and others. This was obviously a nice medium between the anxiety of trying somewhere new and the stress of having to order off a real person. Navigating the menu was easy enough, and there was full nutritional information available at the time of ordering, which is good for people who, like me, have a slightly unhealthy fixation on that kind stuff sometimes. Similarly, the food was indeed very quick, I was waiting for only a minute or two before my food was ready after ordering.

Food

I had the Vegan Sweet Carolina BBQ Burgr with Leon Baked Fries (not sure why they felt the need to put their name on the fries), a “Better Brownie” and white tea & peach juicy water. Everything bar the brownie was part of a meal deal, but I’ll come back to that in a sec. The bad; the fries were very disappointing, especially given they seem to be Leon’s signature dish. They were hard as opposed to crunchy, and generally uninsipiring. The burger on the other hand, was delicious, whichever fake meat patty they were using was almost indistinguishable from the real thing, the bun had vegetables in that actually tasted like they might have some kind of nutritional value, and the BBQ sauce was a winner. Similarly I adored the brownie, it was chewy, dense but not too much so, delightfully sweet but offset with salt too, overall a perfect dessert. It’s unclear to me what about it was “better”, especially as having looked up it’s info it had over 400kcal, but it was delicious enough I didn’t mind too much about the calories.

Value for money

I paid £11.80 for the whole ensemble, with £9.70 of that going to the meal deal and £2.10 for the brownie. The burger on its own would’ve been £5.95, and given the underwhelming nature of the fries, I would’ve rather just had the burger and saved myself the extra couple of pounds. I think at ~£8 for the burger and brownie, Leon actually would’ve been pretty good value for money (at least by London standards), but I did feel a little like I’d been upsold something I didn’t entirely enjoy.

Overall

I would definitely go back to Leon, it was quick and convenient and obviously capable of producing good food. Next time I’ll skip the meal deal as mentioned, but if I decide I can budget in £8 a day for lunch, it might even become a fairly regular fixture. I’d recommend giving it a go, particularly if you’re tight for time, and there are plenty of locations across the city to choose from. 7.5/10.