Caravan, Clerkenwell

Caravan
11 - 13 Exmouth Market
Clerkenwell
EC1R 4QD
020 7833 8115
caravanonexmouth.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

"The beans were just roasted this morning," said the barista, as if by way of warning. "So if there's a certain... fruitiness to the flavour that will be why."

I hereby coin the term 'caravan apology', as in 'an apology for a benevolent state of affairs'. See: "I'm sorry I'm so early" or "I'm sorry, I know we said we wouldn't do presents"; this was the finest cup of coffee I have set to my lips in as long as I can remember, the froth patterned exactly like one of those 70s ring-binders and the taste smoother than a Don Draper infidelity binge.

We ordered baked eggs with chorizo and a side of black pudding. The latter, from Franconia in Putney, was remarkable - light, subtly smoky and, within a matter of seconds, absent. The chorizo and eggs (£11 for two) were delivered chicken madras-style in a handled silver pot, the chorizo bits lurking like crocodiles in a crimson-doused pool of red pepper, green parsley, piquant oily sauce, Greek yoghurt and gloopy, friendly eggs. It became a proper mess, but a bloody delectable one.

What about the service? Tap water was poured immediately without request, then replenished zealously. The room itself? Attractive and light, a mix of Wellington cocktail bar, London bistro and a branch of All Saints. Well-heeled new mothers and rubber-heeled freelancers have already formed a demographic stand-off.

If I must have a gripe, it's that the 'Caravan Fry Up' is £8 but comprising eggs, bacon, tomatoes, soy mushrooms and toast is holding back on some treasures: black pudding and bubble are available but must be ordered as sides at up to £3.50 each. Vietnam-style mission creep is a danger.

Four and a half years ago, I was in this same room - it being until recently Al's Café Bar - complaining in the first ever LRB review that the bacon was only cooked on one side. "I'm sorry you closed, Al's," can be my first caravan apology.

The Three Bells, Heathrow Airport

The Three Bells
Terminal Three (pre-security)
Heathrow Airport
TW6 1AD
020 8897 6755

by Joyce Carol Oats

This is the thing about restaurants in airports: they shouldn’t be good. They should be pretty bad. If they were good you might want to linger there, might regret departure, and regretting departure is not something that you should be doing when you are in a place that is all about leaving. We’re pleased to find one, therefore, that strongly resembles a very expensive Wetherspoon’s, and therefore promises to be pretty bad.

Landside restaurants are pretty bad, in particular, because they are full of people being left behind as well as travellers. We are here because only Departing Friend is going: she is emigrating to America, and a trip on this scale, an actual emigration, seemed to require me and Departing Friend’s Brother to pay our respects to her in person, although now we are here we are just grumpy and quiet and sad.  We take our seats amongst the other heavy-hearted people: here, a couple clutching hands over untouched plates of breakfast glazed with cold bacon fat; there, a moist-eyed grandmother, her daughter, two small shouty grandchildren who no one would ever want to sit next to on a plane.

This is the flavour of goodbye: a thick Cumberland sausage patty, an egg, a puffy white bun, ketchup. I sink my teeth into it and am immediately surprised because, I realise, I am expecting it to taste like a McDonald’s sausage McMuffin. And it doesn’t, perhaps because it costs about £5. There’s something distinctly British about that Cumberland flavour, that even the most uninspiring Cumberland-esque sausage lacks something of the metallic tang of one with the McD recipe, probably because it might contain fewer pieces of actual metal.

It is pretty bad. And the coffee is pretty bad. And Departing Friend and Departing Friend’s Brother are ploughing their way through their English breakfasts like it is their duty, but they are pretty bad. Departing Friend cannot face the tomato. I bite it and it tastes like nothing, a small mercy on the part of the chefs, to ensure that in a place so charged with emotion, the flavour of the tomato will evoke no feeling. And by the time we pay (something ridiculous, like £20) and proceed to wave Departing Friend through security, we are all so preoccupied by being sluggish and sickly that we forget to cry.