06 St Chad's Place, King's Cross

06 St Chad’s Place
6 St Chad's Place
King’s Cross
WC1X 9HH
020 7278 3355
www.6stchadsplace.com

by Blake Pudding

“Do you do breakfast?”
“We don’t do a fried breakfast.”
“Could we see the menu?”
“No, we don’t do a menu.”
“What do you have for breakfast?”
“We have scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, bacon.”
“Super, I’ll have scrambled eggs and bacon on toast.”
“You have to make the toast yourself.”

Now I know this dialogue sounds relatively innocuous but words on the page do not convey the implications behind the waitress’s replies.

She put the emphasis on fried as if there was something morally wrong about an English breakfast. It reminded me of the disapproval aroused when I mentioned that I didn’t recycle. Her tone when announcing that there wasn’t a menu suggested that there was something hierarchical about menus. Don’t you oppress me with your patriarchal lists and colonial meals! So a lot of politics in the customer service and no, before you write in, this wasn’t in my imagination. John O’ Connell noticed it too and he is the world’s nicest most non-abrasive person and he has just been on an 'establishing best practice in multi-platform publishing' course organised by Time Out. Enough politics- what was the food like?

My bacon was obviously a quality rasher once but tasted like it had been gently boiled in burnt fat. The scrambled eggs were nicely cooked but also watery, probably a sign of the mixture sitting around too long. My toast was excellent though I did cook it myself. John had a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel which he was delighted with. He particularly liked the amount of rocket used. “Too much rocket can be pubic,” he muttered mysteriously. He added that he would definitely go back, and so would I as long as the serving staff dropped the Edward Said and learnt to serve and the cooks learnt to cook.