Bodrum Cafe, Stoke Newington

Bodrum Cafe
61 Stoke Newington High Street
Stoke Newington
N16
020 8809 1165

By H.P. Seuss

The aged Professor dropped the empty husk of his vitamin pod and shot Züü-27 a weary smile.

He was tired. He had never adapted to the brave new world that his calamitous discovery of 2017 had helped to create. His inner world remained a past of plastic and wood, where fleshy beings fornicated, read newspapers and subsisted on unfertilised chicken eggs and the sliced haunches of pigs. Züü-27 downed her silicone, and tried to cheer her grandfather.

"Did you breakfast like this in the past?" she asked.

A look of terror crossed the Professor's wrinkled face. "The past is full of ghosts", he said cryptically. Then, just as Züü-27 was preparing to change the subject, his expression changed: "Breakfast, my girl, was not always protein pods and zinc injections. You want to hear of our breakfasts?"

Züü-27 nodded. The Professor took a deep breath.

"Then I shall tell you of the first time we entered Bodrum, on what is now U5987 Street," he began. "Our group was ramshackle and unruly after a night of debauchery. But the kindly staff — Turks, I think — found space for all nine of us, and distributed a menu so comprehensive and inexpensive that even the fussiest was contented. When our ripaste arrived, contentment turned to unbridled joy. You have to understand, child, that such cafés abounded with undercooked bacon and limpid albumen. Not Bodrum. Their breakfast soothed the soul, turned a menacing hangover into sleepy satisfaction and spectacularly transcended the N16 ratio that so blighted the vegetable joints of the more upmarket U5988 Street round the corner." His voice shook: "And it made of bubble and squeak a work of art!"

The Professor hung his head.

"Wow," said Züü-27. "That's got to beat a vitamin pod".

"It most certainly did", said Professor Seuss, wiping away a salty tear.