The London Review of Breakfasts

"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." (Francis Bacon)

Monday, August 04, 2008

Spark Cafe, Clapton

Spark Cafe
Springfield Park Cafe
Springfield Park
Clapton
E5 9EF
www.sparkcafe.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

With thanks to the estate of Eggar Alpen Poe

During half of a bright, sunny and soundless hour in the spring of the year, I had been passing with three others, on foot, through a singularly inky tract of Clapton, and we found ourselves within view of the legendary Springfield Park Cafe. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of being very peckish indeed pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the welcoming café, and the wild features of the park - upon the friendly pigeons - upon the daft little yapping dog - and upon the big marshy whatnot in the distance; I looked upon it all with a great hopefulness of belly that I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than the yearning of a pious alcoholic barbiturates addict, at the very last minute of Lent.

The breakfast was superb. It was not its diameter nor its radius - but its height - ah, that was appealing! A generousness of bacon; an egg large, tasty and summery beyond comparison; two sausages of an addictive herby model, with a breadth of flavour unusual in similar constructions; a hash brown, speaking in its sturdy reliability of an abundance of moral energy; beans alternately vivacious and sullen.

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of parkland whose vegetation, so varied in hue, impressed on my mind at once the urgency with which I should communicate this glorious place to all who would listen, so they could verify my account while the summer still persisted. And I know not how it was but as I left I took a moment to blink and it was autumn, and then it was winter, then it was spring, before I was blinking into the summer once more.

They still do a nice breakfast though, I’m told.

2 Comments:

Blogger HB said...

Wonderful. There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm.

8:25 PM, August 06, 2008  
Blogger James Cherkoff said...

Shhhh, that's my local, don't tell everyone...

1:24 PM, August 12, 2008  

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