Café Lemon
28 Grand Parade
Green Lanes
Harringay
N4
020 8800 2396
by Morcilla Black
Ah, Green Lanes — the Med of the North, with its tantalising east-meets-west frisson of gilt, chrome, novelty fountains and “ram’s reproductive organ” openly available in its healthily competitive restaurants.
But what was this I could see? A surprisingly spacious - dare I say ‘modern’ - café. What’s more, it was in the heart of Green Lanes’ best foodie drag, the stretch calling itself Grand Parade, if you don’t mind.
Breakfast starts from just £3.30 (eggs and toast and I can’t remember what else), although the abstract-expressionist mural along one wall might put the tired and emotional off their prairie oyster, deflecting their eye instead towards the sepia archive prints of Ye Olde Harringay opposite.
While my dining companion plumped for a mushroom/egg/toast combo of her own devising, I opted for the more completist ‘Full Lemon’ which, for £4.20, contained no citrus fruits of any description, but did promise all you really need on the plate plus a tea or (instant) coffee. The bacon was crisp, cooked on both sides, with nary a trace of rind. The sausage was only so-so, but the beans were piping hot, the fresh vine tomato grilled to perfection and the toast served on a side plate, to do with as you would.
Best of all was the black pudding: thinnish, peppery slices of the larger, 5cm-ish diameter sort, satisfyingly seared on both sides, and mercifully free of white, gristly lumps of dubious provenance. This left me in sanguine spirits and I was mollified further still by the discreetly-volumed background warblings of Tarkan, the renowned Turkish/German singing sensation.
With more places like this, and a little self-delusion, perhaps Green Lanes might one day approach the self-consciously chi-chi ambience of nearby Crouch End. Although possibly not in our lifetimes.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Subway, Anywhere
Subway
Anywhere
www.subway.co.uk
by Reggie Brek
It has always been a matter of perverse pride that my taste in food inclines naturally toward the lowbrow. Offered a choice, as I once was on my birthday, between the Wolseley and KFC, I went for the Colonel, and had one of the most gratifying meals of that year. It's nothing to do with reverse snobbishness or anything like that; I just have the palate of a 10-year-old.
Thus, I'm exactly the chow-down type the Subway chain had in mind when they designed their breakfast menu. Already a slave to the perfect rhythm of the McDonald's Big Breakfast, I was very much looking forward to trying Subway's interpretation of the morning meal. A recent-ish arrival from America, specialising in sandwiches on long rolls (including, to my delight, a 12-inch version), it was bound to give the Big Brekko a run for its money.
Well, my hopes foundered as soon as I walked in. Get this - the New York subway map imprinted on the walls was wrong. Parts of it had been transposed to place Brooklyn across the East River from Queens. If they could make so free with the map, whose design is as comforting to New Yorkers as Harry Beck's Underground effort is to Londoners, who knew what they could do to the Breakfast Mega 6-Inch Sub?
I found out. Repairing to a stool with my Mega and a refillable Diet Coke - a sexier bet than the coffee, I thought - I made my way through a mulch of bacon, sausage, egg and Swiss cheese. Now remember, I love this kind of thing, so to me it was an agreeable mulch, but if I were to be critical, I'd mention the pre-formed scrambled eggs, the spicy circle that is probably legally required to be labelled "sausage food" and the weird granules stuck to the roll. I enjoyed it. Proper adults might not.
Anywhere
www.subway.co.uk
by Reggie Brek
It has always been a matter of perverse pride that my taste in food inclines naturally toward the lowbrow. Offered a choice, as I once was on my birthday, between the Wolseley and KFC, I went for the Colonel, and had one of the most gratifying meals of that year. It's nothing to do with reverse snobbishness or anything like that; I just have the palate of a 10-year-old.
Thus, I'm exactly the chow-down type the Subway chain had in mind when they designed their breakfast menu. Already a slave to the perfect rhythm of the McDonald's Big Breakfast, I was very much looking forward to trying Subway's interpretation of the morning meal. A recent-ish arrival from America, specialising in sandwiches on long rolls (including, to my delight, a 12-inch version), it was bound to give the Big Brekko a run for its money.
Well, my hopes foundered as soon as I walked in. Get this - the New York subway map imprinted on the walls was wrong. Parts of it had been transposed to place Brooklyn across the East River from Queens. If they could make so free with the map, whose design is as comforting to New Yorkers as Harry Beck's Underground effort is to Londoners, who knew what they could do to the Breakfast Mega 6-Inch Sub?
I found out. Repairing to a stool with my Mega and a refillable Diet Coke - a sexier bet than the coffee, I thought - I made my way through a mulch of bacon, sausage, egg and Swiss cheese. Now remember, I love this kind of thing, so to me it was an agreeable mulch, but if I were to be critical, I'd mention the pre-formed scrambled eggs, the spicy circle that is probably legally required to be labelled "sausage food" and the weird granules stuck to the roll. I enjoyed it. Proper adults might not.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Fernandez & Wells, Soho
Fernandez & Wells
73 Beak Street
Soho
020 7734 1546
by Armand Croissant
Brightness, cleanliness: the polish of light wood, the glint of light from the coffee machine, the low murmur of awakening media types. Open, airy, the breakfasting half of Fernandez & Wells is as welcome as a half-bottle of flat coke to a hungover student – sweet, refreshing, life-saving. Oh, I could rhapsodise about the friendly staff, the glass of water placed – unasked - reverently and carefully beside the brimming, white perfection of the latte; the puffy, slightly sugary taste of the croissant. But instead I choose as my poetic theme the black pudding and egg mayonnaise sandwich. Oh gods, who have banished the black pudding from the ordinary breakfast table, why hast thou done such a thing? A light, biscuity roll, slightly toasted, with just enough creamy egg and two slices of the black stuff; such a sandwich might have graced the plates of decadent, syphilis-struck Spanish dons, exiled to the sweltering madness of Mexico.
And what is more is that Fernandez & Wells have a lunch place too, on Lexington Street, which in the evening transforms itself into a wine shop. Although the prices slightly creep towards the expensive, it is worth it, and after going there one can never quite face the stodgy horror of Pret a Manger again. Which is bad for the coffers, but good for the soul, and as everyone knows, there is no wealth anyway but the wealth of the soul.
73 Beak Street
Soho
020 7734 1546
by Armand Croissant
Brightness, cleanliness: the polish of light wood, the glint of light from the coffee machine, the low murmur of awakening media types. Open, airy, the breakfasting half of Fernandez & Wells is as welcome as a half-bottle of flat coke to a hungover student – sweet, refreshing, life-saving. Oh, I could rhapsodise about the friendly staff, the glass of water placed – unasked - reverently and carefully beside the brimming, white perfection of the latte; the puffy, slightly sugary taste of the croissant. But instead I choose as my poetic theme the black pudding and egg mayonnaise sandwich. Oh gods, who have banished the black pudding from the ordinary breakfast table, why hast thou done such a thing? A light, biscuity roll, slightly toasted, with just enough creamy egg and two slices of the black stuff; such a sandwich might have graced the plates of decadent, syphilis-struck Spanish dons, exiled to the sweltering madness of Mexico.
And what is more is that Fernandez & Wells have a lunch place too, on Lexington Street, which in the evening transforms itself into a wine shop. Although the prices slightly creep towards the expensive, it is worth it, and after going there one can never quite face the stodgy horror of Pret a Manger again. Which is bad for the coffers, but good for the soul, and as everyone knows, there is no wealth anyway but the wealth of the soul.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Giraffe, Spitalfields
Giraffe
1 Crispin Place
Spitalfields
E1
0203 116 2000
www.giraffe.net
by Dr Sigmund Fried
Due to the previous night's celebration of my passage into the wasteland of my thirties, a sunny Sunday afternoon found me wandering around Spitalfields with a hangover that felt as if someone had stolen my brain and replaced it with a sponge cake full of woodpeckers.
At 30, everything is the same; nothing has changed. The crossover into a new consumer survey demographic has not yielded the maturity that I was anticipating. Proof of this possibly interminable idiocy - that I fear I must now endure until I bugger off of this mortal coil - was having breakfast at Giraffe, an establishment that I have always believed to be the culinary equivalent of Paul Simon's Graceland: mawkish, misguided, and disingenuously naive. (Here's an 'about us' sampler from the website: "Back at the end of last century, Russel Joffe asked himself 'what animal has the biggest heart in the world?' and all of a sudden, Giraffe was born'". Seriously though, what a load of old toss.)
However, with Ed benedict in tow and a definite desire not be in the muculent, claustrophobic environs of the Sunday market proper, compounded by the very real possibility of passing out due to dehydration and hunger, Giraffe it was.
Despite it pushing 4 o'clock I decided to go for the 'Good Morning Brekkie!' (£5.50), simply because it was one of the first things on the menu and I was rapidly losing the ability to read. It was a catastrophic mistake. The scrambled eggs were an insipid, gelatinous lump; the bacon bland and brittle; the toast inexplicably unbuttered, and the baked beans algid.
My esteemed editor assures me that he has had a satisfactory breakfast at Giraffe on more than one occasion, so I guess the joke's on me. What an old twat.
1 Crispin Place
Spitalfields
E1
0203 116 2000
www.giraffe.net
by Dr Sigmund Fried
Due to the previous night's celebration of my passage into the wasteland of my thirties, a sunny Sunday afternoon found me wandering around Spitalfields with a hangover that felt as if someone had stolen my brain and replaced it with a sponge cake full of woodpeckers.
At 30, everything is the same; nothing has changed. The crossover into a new consumer survey demographic has not yielded the maturity that I was anticipating. Proof of this possibly interminable idiocy - that I fear I must now endure until I bugger off of this mortal coil - was having breakfast at Giraffe, an establishment that I have always believed to be the culinary equivalent of Paul Simon's Graceland: mawkish, misguided, and disingenuously naive. (Here's an 'about us' sampler from the website: "Back at the end of last century, Russel Joffe asked himself 'what animal has the biggest heart in the world?' and all of a sudden, Giraffe was born'". Seriously though, what a load of old toss.)
However, with Ed benedict in tow and a definite desire not be in the muculent, claustrophobic environs of the Sunday market proper, compounded by the very real possibility of passing out due to dehydration and hunger, Giraffe it was.
Despite it pushing 4 o'clock I decided to go for the 'Good Morning Brekkie!' (£5.50), simply because it was one of the first things on the menu and I was rapidly losing the ability to read. It was a catastrophic mistake. The scrambled eggs were an insipid, gelatinous lump; the bacon bland and brittle; the toast inexplicably unbuttered, and the baked beans algid.
My esteemed editor assures me that he has had a satisfactory breakfast at Giraffe on more than one occasion, so I guess the joke's on me. What an old twat.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Special Dispatch: Cora's, Montreal
Cora's
3465, Ave. du Parc, Montreal
H2X 2H6
Canada
www.chezcora.com
Excerpt from Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Breakfasts: Selected Writings, edited by Poppy Tartt
Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river; you can’t hear the boats go by because it’s not really near the river, that’s just a rhetorical device; and you know she’s half-crazy, she wants to feed you tea and oranges – among other foods. Suzanne takes your hand and leads you into Cora’s; the sun does not pour down like honey because it’s winter and it’s so cold you don’t feel comfortable outside unless you’re wearing a special suit made of arctic sleeping bags and a fur-lined mask with plastic see-through globes to protect your eyeballs from freezing. You can’t hear the boats go by.
You queue for a while. ‘Come over to the window my little darlings,’ says the waitress. On the walls there are many brightly-coloured bubble drawings of different meals. The menu is like a children’s party invitation. ‘This is funny,’ you tell Suzanne.
She is wearing rags and feathers – or a coat, probably. She says: ‘I told you when we came it would be strange’. Like any eater you are looking for the dish that is so fine and wild you’ll never need to eat another. At least not until later. Pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs. Comes with fruit. On the same dish. In Montreal, this is standard. We laugh and cry about it all. They arrive, breakfasts deep and warm; eggs on the plate like a sleepy golden storm. Suzanne agrees: ‘But let’s not talk of oranges or melons or things we can’t combine.’
God no. Suzanne, thanks for the fruit you took from my plate; I thought it was there for good, so I never tried. I certainly would never have eaten it, all smeary with egg slime. When you eat like this you don’t know what’s for afters.
3465, Ave. du Parc, Montreal
H2X 2H6
Canada
www.chezcora.com
Excerpt from Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Breakfasts: Selected Writings, edited by Poppy Tartt
Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river; you can’t hear the boats go by because it’s not really near the river, that’s just a rhetorical device; and you know she’s half-crazy, she wants to feed you tea and oranges – among other foods. Suzanne takes your hand and leads you into Cora’s; the sun does not pour down like honey because it’s winter and it’s so cold you don’t feel comfortable outside unless you’re wearing a special suit made of arctic sleeping bags and a fur-lined mask with plastic see-through globes to protect your eyeballs from freezing. You can’t hear the boats go by.
You queue for a while. ‘Come over to the window my little darlings,’ says the waitress. On the walls there are many brightly-coloured bubble drawings of different meals. The menu is like a children’s party invitation. ‘This is funny,’ you tell Suzanne.
She is wearing rags and feathers – or a coat, probably. She says: ‘I told you when we came it would be strange’. Like any eater you are looking for the dish that is so fine and wild you’ll never need to eat another. At least not until later. Pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs. Comes with fruit. On the same dish. In Montreal, this is standard. We laugh and cry about it all. They arrive, breakfasts deep and warm; eggs on the plate like a sleepy golden storm. Suzanne agrees: ‘But let’s not talk of oranges or melons or things we can’t combine.’
God no. Suzanne, thanks for the fruit you took from my plate; I thought it was there for good, so I never tried. I certainly would never have eaten it, all smeary with egg slime. When you eat like this you don’t know what’s for afters.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Delice de France, Euston
Delice de France
Euston Railway Station
Euston Road
Euston
NW1
020 8917 9600
www.delicedefrance.co.uk
by Phil English
The trouble with words, as someone smarter than me has no doubt more elegantly remarked, is that you can't always be sure you know exactly what they mean. This is particularly problematic when it comes to food and British humour (my two favourite things; see also Jewish humour). Take the following:
1. Sarcasm: a sneer or cutting remark.
2. Facetiousness: a humorous remark not designed to be taken seriously.
3. Irony: Use of words to indicate the opposite of their literal meaning.
4. Gourmet: someone who enjoys fine food.
5. Gourmand: someone who enjoys a lot of fine food.
6. Glutton: someone who enjoys a lot of food, fine or otherwise.
7. Emoticons: annoying things used by twats who can't express themselves in writing without recourse to idiotic primary-school motifs. (I know what this means really and it has nothing to do with food or humour, but this is my column so deal with it).
It sometimes helps to use an example to aid your understanding. Thus when asked the question, "shall we go to eat at Delice de France?", the following answers might be given:
1. Yeah! I fucking love it there!
2. What a marvellous idea. I've heard their double chocolate muffins and cappuccini are to die for.
3. Two thousand spoons? I asked for a knife.
4. No thanks, let's go to the Wolseley.
5. No thanks, let's go to the Wolseley. Twice.
6. Mmm, yes. Get me everything on the menu, especially one of those preternaturally rancid ham and cheese croissants. Scrunch, scrunch.
7. :(
So for the sake of clarity: I do not 'recommend' that you breakfast at Delice de France.
Euston Railway Station
Euston Road
Euston
NW1
020 8917 9600
www.delicedefrance.co.uk
by Phil English
The trouble with words, as someone smarter than me has no doubt more elegantly remarked, is that you can't always be sure you know exactly what they mean. This is particularly problematic when it comes to food and British humour (my two favourite things; see also Jewish humour). Take the following:
1. Sarcasm: a sneer or cutting remark.
2. Facetiousness: a humorous remark not designed to be taken seriously.
3. Irony: Use of words to indicate the opposite of their literal meaning.
4. Gourmet: someone who enjoys fine food.
5. Gourmand: someone who enjoys a lot of fine food.
6. Glutton: someone who enjoys a lot of food, fine or otherwise.
7. Emoticons: annoying things used by twats who can't express themselves in writing without recourse to idiotic primary-school motifs. (I know what this means really and it has nothing to do with food or humour, but this is my column so deal with it).
It sometimes helps to use an example to aid your understanding. Thus when asked the question, "shall we go to eat at Delice de France?", the following answers might be given:
1. Yeah! I fucking love it there!
2. What a marvellous idea. I've heard their double chocolate muffins and cappuccini are to die for.
3. Two thousand spoons? I asked for a knife.
4. No thanks, let's go to the Wolseley.
5. No thanks, let's go to the Wolseley. Twice.
6. Mmm, yes. Get me everything on the menu, especially one of those preternaturally rancid ham and cheese croissants. Scrunch, scrunch.
7. :(
So for the sake of clarity: I do not 'recommend' that you breakfast at Delice de France.
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