Café Fleur
198 St. Ann's Hill
Wandsworth
SW18 2RT
020 8874 6897
by Blake Pudding
Delightfully common, I murmured to myself with an unbecoming leer as I clocked the waitresses.
Emily and James had told us to meet them at Café Fleur. You would not know that this is its name as it just says café café café café café around the top of the caff. It was a boiling hot day (how incongruous those words seem now) and I was dressed in a look best described as 80’s gay chic- white linen trousers rolled up to show off my shapely calves, stripy vest, panama hat. Alice was wearing a dress which emphasised her cleavage. We had had about 2 hours sleep.
The café seemed to have been staffed by roguishly pretty urchins straight out of those ASBO scum girl nightmare articles that crop up in the papers now and again. They were dressed in leisure wear, hair pulled tightly back, hoop earrings, incredibly pale skin and gappy teeth. They were of course utterly charming. The caff has been done up to make it look a bit “latte” but the girls gave away its proletarian origins. Happily it did a good honest working class breakfast. Frightening sausages obviously but you will have learnt by now to avoid such things. I went for the egg, bacon, bubble, tomato, black pudding, strong tea and toast. All were unpretentiously delicious.
To finish the fortification process we strolled over to the Alma for some Young’s Special though a little sleep would have been the healthier option.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Café Crescent, Camden Town
Café Crescent
40 Camden High St
Camden Town
NW1
020 7839 2823
by Nelson Griddle
****CAFÉ CRESCENT HAS NOW CLOSED. IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY CAFÉ GRILL****
Café Crescent is a mixed bag. Its yellow-painted walls announce as much with their odd jumble of theatrical posters: Dirty Dancing shares space with The Cherry Orchard and Tony Hadley in Chicago jostles with Hamlet.
The theatricality continues with the sweetly-spoken, Beatnik-themed waitress. Meanwhile, swooning classical music plays from a tape recorder, and we chomp away to the theme from The Onedin Line. Such sweeping lyricism does little to cheer my fellow punters, though, as they stare over their mugs of tea, ruminating bleakly on the iniquities of the smoking ban and the trials of life in general. The tea here is hot and strong and made in a proper steel pot
For solid sustenance, I opt for egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. They say that frying an egg is the ultimate test of a chef and on that basis the man who wields the Crescent’s spatula is a genius of the first rank. The white of my egg is beautifully firm and the yolk a perfect orb of creamy liquid which glugs satisfyingly out onto the fried bread. The bacon, too, is done to the turn, and the sausage and mushrooms both put in a performance on the right side of acceptable.
All this good work is undone, however, by the presence of tinned tomatoes. I might as well confess now to LRB readers that I cannot stand tinned tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes, I love. Grilled tomatoes, I dote on. But tinned tomatoes have, from earliest childhood, turned my stomach. There’s something unnatural – almost Lovecraftian – about these sludgy things, in their primordial confusion of solid and liquid, with a taste so weirdly overpowering as to kill any other flavour stone dead. Ordering grilled tomatoes and being given the tinned variety is like…well, a bit like wanting to see The Cherry Orchard and ending up with Tony Hadley.
Café Crescent, take note. Ah well, at least the tea’s alright.
40 Camden High St
Camden Town
NW1
020 7839 2823
by Nelson Griddle
****CAFÉ CRESCENT HAS NOW CLOSED. IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY CAFÉ GRILL****
Café Crescent is a mixed bag. Its yellow-painted walls announce as much with their odd jumble of theatrical posters: Dirty Dancing shares space with The Cherry Orchard and Tony Hadley in Chicago jostles with Hamlet.
The theatricality continues with the sweetly-spoken, Beatnik-themed waitress. Meanwhile, swooning classical music plays from a tape recorder, and we chomp away to the theme from The Onedin Line. Such sweeping lyricism does little to cheer my fellow punters, though, as they stare over their mugs of tea, ruminating bleakly on the iniquities of the smoking ban and the trials of life in general. The tea here is hot and strong and made in a proper steel pot
For solid sustenance, I opt for egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. They say that frying an egg is the ultimate test of a chef and on that basis the man who wields the Crescent’s spatula is a genius of the first rank. The white of my egg is beautifully firm and the yolk a perfect orb of creamy liquid which glugs satisfyingly out onto the fried bread. The bacon, too, is done to the turn, and the sausage and mushrooms both put in a performance on the right side of acceptable.
All this good work is undone, however, by the presence of tinned tomatoes. I might as well confess now to LRB readers that I cannot stand tinned tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes, I love. Grilled tomatoes, I dote on. But tinned tomatoes have, from earliest childhood, turned my stomach. There’s something unnatural – almost Lovecraftian – about these sludgy things, in their primordial confusion of solid and liquid, with a taste so weirdly overpowering as to kill any other flavour stone dead. Ordering grilled tomatoes and being given the tinned variety is like…well, a bit like wanting to see The Cherry Orchard and ending up with Tony Hadley.
Café Crescent, take note. Ah well, at least the tea’s alright.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Dem Cafe Bar, Stoke Newington
Dem Cafe Bar
18 Stoke Newington High St
Stoke Newington
N16 7PL
020 7254 6364
by Duke Eggington
You know what it’s like when you arrive in a small town early in the morning half asleep at the wheel. Your eyes are stinging and your stomach feels like an acid pit. Such is the mood as I wander into DEM on a Saturday morning.
After a cup of the finest Illy coffee for me, and a juice with a pink straw to match my baby’s dress for her, I order a DEM veggie breakfast – an English-Kurdish fusion. Predictably the hash brown and veggie sausage are nothing to sing and dance about, and the grilled halloumi and chilli olives aren’t to everyone’s taste - but there’s something appealing about a good dose of salt first thing in the morning. The inclusion of cold salad items like cucumber and tomato could also have some folk heading straight back out the door, but removal of surface skin in both cases kept us happy.
The baked beans on toast for my baby is nothing special, but when you’re feeding a two-year-old it’s best to keep things simple. The bread is a mixed experience: while of the authentic Turkish variety, it is also somewhere between bread and toast, neither nice and soft or entirely crispy.
In fact, the best thing about the breakfast has to be the waitress - a Middle Eastern beauty who either of us would gladly taken home, either for her generous smiles, or her free-flowing lollipops. By the time we leave we are both sewn up, but not stitched up. If we’d turned the corner onto Stoke Newington Church Street we would have had similar food at roughly double the price.
I urge you to check Dem out.
18 Stoke Newington High St
Stoke Newington
N16 7PL
020 7254 6364
by Duke Eggington
You know what it’s like when you arrive in a small town early in the morning half asleep at the wheel. Your eyes are stinging and your stomach feels like an acid pit. Such is the mood as I wander into DEM on a Saturday morning.
After a cup of the finest Illy coffee for me, and a juice with a pink straw to match my baby’s dress for her, I order a DEM veggie breakfast – an English-Kurdish fusion. Predictably the hash brown and veggie sausage are nothing to sing and dance about, and the grilled halloumi and chilli olives aren’t to everyone’s taste - but there’s something appealing about a good dose of salt first thing in the morning. The inclusion of cold salad items like cucumber and tomato could also have some folk heading straight back out the door, but removal of surface skin in both cases kept us happy.
The baked beans on toast for my baby is nothing special, but when you’re feeding a two-year-old it’s best to keep things simple. The bread is a mixed experience: while of the authentic Turkish variety, it is also somewhere between bread and toast, neither nice and soft or entirely crispy.
In fact, the best thing about the breakfast has to be the waitress - a Middle Eastern beauty who either of us would gladly taken home, either for her generous smiles, or her free-flowing lollipops. By the time we leave we are both sewn up, but not stitched up. If we’d turned the corner onto Stoke Newington Church Street we would have had similar food at roughly double the price.
I urge you to check Dem out.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The Zetter, Clerkenwell
The Zetter
St John's Square
86-88 Clerkenwell Rd
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
020 7324 4444
www.thezetter.com
by Malcolm Eggs
A flight to Madrid, sixty-five fish fingers, a "Garden Dreamscape beading kit", 100ml of Panacur 10% (For Dogs), a full English breakfast at The Zetter. All these things cost £16.99. I'm no regular patron of lists such as this: it's all too easy to find oneself impaled on the horns of dilemmas such as 'dinner vs more wine'. Just spend as required and let Future Malcolm work it out - that's the key. But as Orva Easy and I emerged from The Zetter, a boutique hotel in the historic backlands of Clerkenwell, I found myself imagining a million different Malcolms - this one with his shampoo and pen knife, that one with his square foot of office space - and I had this horrible suspicion that nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them received better value for money than the one trying to get to the point in this review.
I knew it would be disappointing before the waitress even reached us - the light was good, I'll give them that - and the closer the ghoulish rashers that crowned the heap loomed, the worse my morning became. Cooked on one side only, they were rarer than a man campaigning to Save the Diplodocus. My first instinct was to dash for the solace of the poached egg, but its undercooked core of translucent goo would give me days of nasty flashbacks. The toast was cut from an excellent loaf but would buttering it have been impossible? Nondescript mushroom and tomato and a likeable (if dense) sausage could only try vainly to balance the books, because a breakfast this expensive should be a wonderful memory, not - at best - a boring anecdote.
St John's Square
86-88 Clerkenwell Rd
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
020 7324 4444
www.thezetter.com
by Malcolm Eggs
A flight to Madrid, sixty-five fish fingers, a "Garden Dreamscape beading kit", 100ml of Panacur 10% (For Dogs), a full English breakfast at The Zetter. All these things cost £16.99. I'm no regular patron of lists such as this: it's all too easy to find oneself impaled on the horns of dilemmas such as 'dinner vs more wine'. Just spend as required and let Future Malcolm work it out - that's the key. But as Orva Easy and I emerged from The Zetter, a boutique hotel in the historic backlands of Clerkenwell, I found myself imagining a million different Malcolms - this one with his shampoo and pen knife, that one with his square foot of office space - and I had this horrible suspicion that nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them received better value for money than the one trying to get to the point in this review.
I knew it would be disappointing before the waitress even reached us - the light was good, I'll give them that - and the closer the ghoulish rashers that crowned the heap loomed, the worse my morning became. Cooked on one side only, they were rarer than a man campaigning to Save the Diplodocus. My first instinct was to dash for the solace of the poached egg, but its undercooked core of translucent goo would give me days of nasty flashbacks. The toast was cut from an excellent loaf but would buttering it have been impossible? Nondescript mushroom and tomato and a likeable (if dense) sausage could only try vainly to balance the books, because a breakfast this expensive should be a wonderful memory, not - at best - a boring anecdote.
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