The last few months have been a really stressful time for us - we’ve been having a huge renovation project at our house, so we’ve moved across the county from Surrey to Berkshire, to live with my parents. I’m eternally grateful that they’ve put us all up, but as someone who is a huge homebird, it’s been difficult not to have that space that you feel is your home. But it has encouraged me to explore new places, and one of those has been The Lexicon in Bracknell. We were invited to Bill’s restaurant last week, to try out their spring menu, and I took along Ben and my friend Laura (Dear Bear and Beany).

I love Bill’s - it’s somewhere that we love to visit for brunch, and I find it’s really family friendly. However, it’s not somewhere that we’ve tended to go a lot recently, as I found that their children’s menu wasn’t great for Ben’s milk allergy, so if we were eating as a family, we’d pick somewhere that I knew catered for it better. But chatting to the staff at Bill’s before our visit, I was assured that the chefs would be able to adapt a dish to suit Ben.

I love the decor at Bill’s. Their stylish shelves, stacked full of cans and bottles, always give such a welcome splash of colour. And I like that they usually have a range of seating options - booths and tables - and plenty of space to park a pushchair at the side. I hate when you go out to eat and you’re so close to the next table that you can hear their conversation!

The new spring menu gave us lots of choice, as well as including lots of familiar favourites. I opted for calamari to start, which was a really good sized portion (anyone else get a bit miffed when you get served a really stingy portion of calamari?), and Ben had the usual kids starter of carrot, cucumber and hummus (apparently he doesn’t like hummus anymore though, judging by the face he pulled at eating it! The cucumber went down a treat though).

For my main, I opted for Thai Green Curry. I find there’s just something so comforting about Thai curry, and being away from home I felt like I needed comfort food! Fresh, mildly spicy, and just like what we would cook at home - it ticked all the boxes.

For Ben, we opted for the children’s sausages and mash, but with chips instead of the mash. He ate all of the peas, and all of the sausages, and in true ‘keep you on your toes’ kid style, he ate absolutely none of the chips. I can confirm they were tasty though as I couldn’t resist trying a few!

But surely the best part of any meal is dessert? And if you don’t agree, I’m not sure we can be friends anymore! The lemon meringue sundae sounded amazing, and both Laura and I were tempted by that, but sadly they’d sold out, so we went for the brownie, and ice cream instead.

And the best part of dessert for me? Seeing Ben able to have a kids dessert that wasn’t just fruit! Their sorbet was both dairy and soya free, so Ben was able to enjoy ice cream with strawberries and bananas - and just look at his little face! He was so chuffed and kept going with the spoon long after it had all gone. I don’t think he could quite believe it was finished!

Thank you so much to Bill’s for inviting us - we had a wonderful time, and I’ll definitely feel much more inclined to revisit with Ben now!

Disclosure: We were invited to Bill’s for a meal in exchange for this blog post.