The University Women’s Club
2 Audley Square
Mayfair
W1K 1DB
020 7499 2268
www.universitywomensclub.com
by Seggolène Royal
In the United States, from whence I hail, the word “university” is synonymous not with learning or advancement, but with breakfast. Eighteen year-olds across America leave the bosoms of their families to go to “college,” living in dormitories and having to look after themselves for the first time with no parents to supervise. Those dorms feature dining halls where the students have paid to take part in meal plans which allow them unlimited amounts of food per meal. Half buffet-style, half food court, in my day you could get any variety of foods at a moment’s notice, from pizza to burgers to boeuf bourguignon, although today the better schools probably have sushi bars and gluten-free options.
Breakfast is the meal of champions, however, and that is where we all packed on the infamous Freshman Fifteen. An amuse bouche of yogurt, an appetizer of Lucky Charms, French toast with scrambled eggs and bacon for the main, a side order of waffles, and for dessert a granola bar on the way to class. I look back to those breakfast days of 1996-7 and feel at once revolted and nostalgic.
Given this implacable association between breakfast and university, it seems appropriate to discuss the breakfast on offer at the University Women’s Club in Mayfair. It was founded in 1886 by Gertrude E.M. Jackson, a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, who got together some of her best friends from school and decided to start a women’s club to rival the men’s clubs from which they were barred. After moving around to several different addresses, in 1921 the ladies of the UWC adopted the present building, which has the distinction of having been used as a model for the house in Dorothy L. Sayers’s 1936 detective tale The Haunted Policemen.
I was able to visit the UWC earlier this month thanks to my alma mater, Barnard College, which has worked out a special arrangement: when visiting London, we can go and stay there for a discounted rate. The rooms are spartan but comfortable, the dining room cheerful and elegant. I did not run across any haunted policemen. Left to my own devices in a cushy upstairs hallway, I took a few minutes to commune with the Victorian founders, whose photographs hang on the richly striped walls. Those august women stare out in sepia, unsmiling, unaccustomed to arranging their features for a camera. What were their breakfasts like, I wondered?
Indeed, what are breakfasts like in English university dining halls? I have some vague supposition that they are overseen by stern-faced dons in gowns, Lucky Jim meets “Oliver!”. I was not to find out. When I went, the University Women’s Club was uniquely peopled by the American alumnae of Seven Sisters schools, who seemed to be there on some kind of reunion. They compared notes on former schoolchums:
“Do you remember Dorothy? Dorothy Feinberg, is her maiden name?”
“Dorothy Baumberg?”
“No, Feinberg. Nancy was in Cushing, we were in Cushing together.”
“Oh, well, I was in Strong, that’s why I didn’t know her.”
Cushing? Strong? A Google search reveals these to be the names of residence halls at Vassar College. These women would have graduated back when, like Barnard, Vassar was an all-girls school. I was the youngest person there, except for somebody’s granddaughter, who wore a black velvet bow right on top of her head, a calf-length black dress, and black lace-up boots. She looked exactly the way the Victorian founders’ granddaughters must have looked.
I read the paper and smiled at my fellow diners as they discussed their respective hometowns: Boston, New York, DC. The waitress indicated a buffet where I could serve myself. The breakfast was not as copious as it would have been at an actual university, but it was sufficient. For £6.50, there were croissants, various cereals, including muesli, Rachel’s yogurt (reason enough to make a person move to England), a bowl of fruit, toast, coffee, several kinds of juice, and tea. Unfortunately, given that I have developed a gluten allergy since my university days, I had to skip the toast and the heavenly-looking jams in favor of muesli in yogurt with honey. (Yes, there is gluten in muesli, but not as much as in toast, or so I tell myself.) The muesli was quite good, except that it was filled with enormous chunks of dried yellow fruit the size of small dominoes. If you like that mystery yellow fruit, this must be a huge bonus. I however prefer a more even ratio of dried fruits to grains. I isolated the offending fruit in a corner of the bowl: no harm done. The coffee was perfectly nutty and the milk warmed. When I left, I took a banana for the walk to class.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Breakfast from America: Christie’s Cabaret, Cleveland, Ohio
Christie’s Cabaret
1180 Main Avenue
Cleveland
Ohio
OH 44113-2325
USA
+1 (216) 574-6222
[NSFW!]www.christiescabaret.com
by T. N. Toost
Gina sat down with us and immediately started talking about her life – how she taught mentally disabled kids, how she had a very smart 11-year-old son, how she picked up a couple of shifts here on the weekends to make ends meet. She made more here, she said, than teaching. I thought she was bluffing about her Masters degree until she started talking about taking her son to Occupy Wall Street because it was a unique opportunity to show him what could be historically important protests – “sort of like the real Tea Party, Hoovervilles, or any of the Marches on Washington over the last fifty years.” To her, all of these protests were about normal people with normal lives who did something extraordinary (“in the real sense of the word”), then went back to their lives, thus truly participating as Americans in the Washington/Cincinnatus mold. OWS was something that she wanted him to experience, and as she talked her leg pressed against mine and I commented on it.
“It’s not rocket science,” she said, leaning in and grinning seductively in the half-light.
Then we talked about the restaurant, and America. Like she said, it wasn’t rocket science. Everything was thoroughly considered and organized for specific reasons, each of which understood and manipulated human nature in order to get generally predictable results. One group, generally the minority, took advantage of and exploited the masses, but the masses only subconsciously felt their exploitation. Indeed, most of the time they thought that they were privileged just to be there. I was surprised; as a woman, then, did she ever feel exploited? Never! Nobody, she explained, could ever be exploited against his or her will. It was people like me who were the dupes, she and her peers were the ones in charge, and we, as dupes, didn’t even realize it. She was part of the ruling class, taking peoples’ money at will, struggling, getting rejected, and, when someone owed her money, an entire phalanx of hulking brutes existed solely to materialize out of the shadows and bully debtors into coughing up cash.
I felt my eyes opening.
I was about to ask her about the Greek debt crisis and whether she thought Perry or Cain had a chance against Romney when our Christie's Omelets came. Beau was talking to an Asian girl, an accountant, and she and Gina got up to powder their noses while we ate. The omelets glistened with grease, looking like monstrous wet burritos. At first bite they were amazing. The thick-cut bacon came in curled-up squares, spilling out of the sides; the vegetables were pliant; it exploded with cheese and the eggs – of course we had to get eggs – were wrapped tightly around the filling, keeping everything hot and moist. The second bite, though, was a little less impressive, the third less still, and after the fourth bite I was starting to wonder if I could eat any more. Five minutes later I pushed the plate away, leaving a good quarter of the omelet on the plate along with a thick layer of orange grease.
Then there were breasts in my face, Gina’s breasts, and they pushed against my forehead, my nose, my chest, my stomach, my legs, leaving a trail of perfume which washing could never expunge. It only lasted a moment, though, and I left unsatisfied. They promised much, but in reality we were the ones being impoverished by a minority just for the privilege of chasing a dream. Feeling slightly nauseous, we paid and walked out; the entire way home, my bowels rumbled, dissatisfied with the omelet and with something less tangible.
1180 Main Avenue
Cleveland
Ohio
OH 44113-2325
USA
+1 (216) 574-6222
[NSFW!]www.christiescabaret.com
by T. N. Toost
Gina sat down with us and immediately started talking about her life – how she taught mentally disabled kids, how she had a very smart 11-year-old son, how she picked up a couple of shifts here on the weekends to make ends meet. She made more here, she said, than teaching. I thought she was bluffing about her Masters degree until she started talking about taking her son to Occupy Wall Street because it was a unique opportunity to show him what could be historically important protests – “sort of like the real Tea Party, Hoovervilles, or any of the Marches on Washington over the last fifty years.” To her, all of these protests were about normal people with normal lives who did something extraordinary (“in the real sense of the word”), then went back to their lives, thus truly participating as Americans in the Washington/Cincinnatus mold. OWS was something that she wanted him to experience, and as she talked her leg pressed against mine and I commented on it.
“It’s not rocket science,” she said, leaning in and grinning seductively in the half-light.
Then we talked about the restaurant, and America. Like she said, it wasn’t rocket science. Everything was thoroughly considered and organized for specific reasons, each of which understood and manipulated human nature in order to get generally predictable results. One group, generally the minority, took advantage of and exploited the masses, but the masses only subconsciously felt their exploitation. Indeed, most of the time they thought that they were privileged just to be there. I was surprised; as a woman, then, did she ever feel exploited? Never! Nobody, she explained, could ever be exploited against his or her will. It was people like me who were the dupes, she and her peers were the ones in charge, and we, as dupes, didn’t even realize it. She was part of the ruling class, taking peoples’ money at will, struggling, getting rejected, and, when someone owed her money, an entire phalanx of hulking brutes existed solely to materialize out of the shadows and bully debtors into coughing up cash.
I felt my eyes opening.
I was about to ask her about the Greek debt crisis and whether she thought Perry or Cain had a chance against Romney when our Christie's Omelets came. Beau was talking to an Asian girl, an accountant, and she and Gina got up to powder their noses while we ate. The omelets glistened with grease, looking like monstrous wet burritos. At first bite they were amazing. The thick-cut bacon came in curled-up squares, spilling out of the sides; the vegetables were pliant; it exploded with cheese and the eggs – of course we had to get eggs – were wrapped tightly around the filling, keeping everything hot and moist. The second bite, though, was a little less impressive, the third less still, and after the fourth bite I was starting to wonder if I could eat any more. Five minutes later I pushed the plate away, leaving a good quarter of the omelet on the plate along with a thick layer of orange grease.
Then there were breasts in my face, Gina’s breasts, and they pushed against my forehead, my nose, my chest, my stomach, my legs, leaving a trail of perfume which washing could never expunge. It only lasted a moment, though, and I left unsatisfied. They promised much, but in reality we were the ones being impoverished by a minority just for the privilege of chasing a dream. Feeling slightly nauseous, we paid and walked out; the entire way home, my bowels rumbled, dissatisfied with the omelet and with something less tangible.
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Patisserie Valerie, Marylebone
Patisserie Valerie
105 Marylebone High St
Marylebone
W1U 4RS
020 7935 6240
www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk
by Mack Muffin
Patisserie Valerie was formed in Soho’s Frith Street in 1926, by the pâtissière Madam Valerie – a formidable woman, by all accounts, on what the history books now describe as ‘a mission to introduce fine continental patisserie to the English’. How delightful. How impudent. How French.
Since moving to Old Compton Street in a va te faire foutre to the Luftwaffe, twenty or more franchises have sprung up in the capital alone – with only the one on Marylebone High Street, to my mind, maintaining the left-leaning, quasi-intellectual ambience of the original.
It was for this and other similarly pretentious reasoning that led me to spend every afternoon there while writing my first novel, a laptop being the only clue to my contemporariness. I was otherwise the picture of pre-War Rive Gauche chic; a twenty-first-century Hemingway, but with a northern accent.
Two hours was, happily enough for this workshy writer, the optimal time to type a bit and consume un café American, but what enticed me first to Patisserie Valerie – pre-novel, pre-pretention – was the breakfast.
Nevermind the anachronistic eastern European staff in 20s garb, or the fact that sitting outside renders any cooked meal too cold to eat halfway through – something about the breeze in Marylebone, perhaps change in the air – the scrambled eggs are divine. Buttery, creamy, sloppy; no word in the Earth language, ē sounding or otherwise, can do justice to the perfect marriage of taste and texture in those eggs.
Nevermind having to add the butter sur la table to triangulated toast – really, who does that? – or the redundant sprig garnish, or indeed the impossibly enormous plates that make for an amusing game of pass the parcel, shunting anything not immediately of use (sugar, par exemple) to adjacent diners. The eggs are divine.
I should say were, as my most recent trips to the chain – not to Marylebone, I might add – have dealt what can only be described as a crushing blow, far worse than anything those pesky Nazis could muster, to Madam Valerie’s ‘mission’. One can only hope that in Marylebone, at least, Madam’s legacy, and my atavistic artistique pretention, lives on.
105 Marylebone High St
Marylebone
W1U 4RS
020 7935 6240
www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk
by Mack Muffin
Patisserie Valerie was formed in Soho’s Frith Street in 1926, by the pâtissière Madam Valerie – a formidable woman, by all accounts, on what the history books now describe as ‘a mission to introduce fine continental patisserie to the English’. How delightful. How impudent. How French.
Since moving to Old Compton Street in a va te faire foutre to the Luftwaffe, twenty or more franchises have sprung up in the capital alone – with only the one on Marylebone High Street, to my mind, maintaining the left-leaning, quasi-intellectual ambience of the original.
It was for this and other similarly pretentious reasoning that led me to spend every afternoon there while writing my first novel, a laptop being the only clue to my contemporariness. I was otherwise the picture of pre-War Rive Gauche chic; a twenty-first-century Hemingway, but with a northern accent.
Two hours was, happily enough for this workshy writer, the optimal time to type a bit and consume un café American, but what enticed me first to Patisserie Valerie – pre-novel, pre-pretention – was the breakfast.
Nevermind the anachronistic eastern European staff in 20s garb, or the fact that sitting outside renders any cooked meal too cold to eat halfway through – something about the breeze in Marylebone, perhaps change in the air – the scrambled eggs are divine. Buttery, creamy, sloppy; no word in the Earth language, ē sounding or otherwise, can do justice to the perfect marriage of taste and texture in those eggs.
Nevermind having to add the butter sur la table to triangulated toast – really, who does that? – or the redundant sprig garnish, or indeed the impossibly enormous plates that make for an amusing game of pass the parcel, shunting anything not immediately of use (sugar, par exemple) to adjacent diners. The eggs are divine.
I should say were, as my most recent trips to the chain – not to Marylebone, I might add – have dealt what can only be described as a crushing blow, far worse than anything those pesky Nazis could muster, to Madam Valerie’s ‘mission’. One can only hope that in Marylebone, at least, Madam’s legacy, and my atavistic artistique pretention, lives on.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Special dispatch: Gusto, Cape Town, South Africa
Gusto
117 Hatfield Street
Gardens
Cape Town
South Africa
+27 (0)21 461 7868
by Flora Ashley
This morning Cape Town was brought to a grinding halt by an hour-long power cut. Never the most productive of workers, Capetonians – who have a deserved reputation for dropping everything and heading to the beach at the merest opportunity – looked out of the window, saw that the weather was gloriously sunny, and decided to call it a day.
The tourists looked happy. Not because the city was on an impromptu holiday, but because – at last! – this was Africa. Here was the ‘real’ Africa – or, if they’re American, Ah-frica – of unexpected and unexplained blackouts. If only a cow or two – or even just a goat and some chickens – would wander through the CBD then the experience would be complete.
However much they seem to like Cape Town, one always has the impression that tourists are a little disappointed by how... familiar the city feels with its rows of Victorian terraces, hipsters and artisanal coffee shops. Suddenly their flack jackets (what do they keep in all those little pockets? Malaria tablets? Emergency quinine rations?) and head-to-toe khaki outfits seem strangely out of place.
My friend E and I saw two particularly mournful Germans while eating breakfast at Gusto on Saturday. We were sitting in the pretty courtyard of a Georgian building, and half of the blackboard-walled cafe was taken over by earnest white, middle-class women with their yoga mats, and I wanted to shake the tourists by the shoulders and shout, ‘Cheer up! This is an essentially Capetonian experience! An anthropologist could not ask for a better case study!’
Gusto is in a part of town which has been heavily gentrified – even five years ago I wouldn’t have walked around the area – and serves ‘whole’ food. It does lunch and breakfast, and on weekends sells organic veg. Having pulled back from a slide into urban decay, the city is now littered with similar cafes specialising in seasonal cookery; Cape Town is yoga- and smoothie-mad; and there are more food bloggers than is sensible.
Our breakfast could easily have been served in Melbourne or San Francisco. On the other hand it reeked of Cape Town: from our cappuccinos made from Origin beans (truly the only coffee for the cool Capetonian), to the aggressively frothy apple and orange smoothie, to the food. This was not the kind of place that does bacon and eggs with beans and bubble.
E had poached eggs with roasted tomatoes and goats’ cheese: the eggs perfectly runny, the tomatoes charred and just this side of squidgy. (I say nothing about the cheese. I think it’s vile and an abomination.) I have a tremendous weakness for French toast, and it came with flaked almonds, cinnamon, and crème fraîche. It was almost perfect, but I don’t understand the vogue for making French toast with sourdough or ciabatta: it goes tough and tastes too much of bread instead of eggy deliciousness.
We ate, in short, with gusto. (Sorry.) And even the Germans – who had sighed and wondered why they’d travelled so far just to have croissants and coffee for breakfast – perked up and decided to walk down the road to Parliament, no doubt in the hope of spotting a coup d’état.
117 Hatfield Street
Gardens
Cape Town
South Africa
+27 (0)21 461 7868
by Flora Ashley
This morning Cape Town was brought to a grinding halt by an hour-long power cut. Never the most productive of workers, Capetonians – who have a deserved reputation for dropping everything and heading to the beach at the merest opportunity – looked out of the window, saw that the weather was gloriously sunny, and decided to call it a day.
The tourists looked happy. Not because the city was on an impromptu holiday, but because – at last! – this was Africa. Here was the ‘real’ Africa – or, if they’re American, Ah-frica – of unexpected and unexplained blackouts. If only a cow or two – or even just a goat and some chickens – would wander through the CBD then the experience would be complete.
However much they seem to like Cape Town, one always has the impression that tourists are a little disappointed by how... familiar the city feels with its rows of Victorian terraces, hipsters and artisanal coffee shops. Suddenly their flack jackets (what do they keep in all those little pockets? Malaria tablets? Emergency quinine rations?) and head-to-toe khaki outfits seem strangely out of place.
My friend E and I saw two particularly mournful Germans while eating breakfast at Gusto on Saturday. We were sitting in the pretty courtyard of a Georgian building, and half of the blackboard-walled cafe was taken over by earnest white, middle-class women with their yoga mats, and I wanted to shake the tourists by the shoulders and shout, ‘Cheer up! This is an essentially Capetonian experience! An anthropologist could not ask for a better case study!’
Gusto is in a part of town which has been heavily gentrified – even five years ago I wouldn’t have walked around the area – and serves ‘whole’ food. It does lunch and breakfast, and on weekends sells organic veg. Having pulled back from a slide into urban decay, the city is now littered with similar cafes specialising in seasonal cookery; Cape Town is yoga- and smoothie-mad; and there are more food bloggers than is sensible.
Our breakfast could easily have been served in Melbourne or San Francisco. On the other hand it reeked of Cape Town: from our cappuccinos made from Origin beans (truly the only coffee for the cool Capetonian), to the aggressively frothy apple and orange smoothie, to the food. This was not the kind of place that does bacon and eggs with beans and bubble.
E had poached eggs with roasted tomatoes and goats’ cheese: the eggs perfectly runny, the tomatoes charred and just this side of squidgy. (I say nothing about the cheese. I think it’s vile and an abomination.) I have a tremendous weakness for French toast, and it came with flaked almonds, cinnamon, and crème fraîche. It was almost perfect, but I don’t understand the vogue for making French toast with sourdough or ciabatta: it goes tough and tastes too much of bread instead of eggy deliciousness.
We ate, in short, with gusto. (Sorry.) And even the Germans – who had sighed and wondered why they’d travelled so far just to have croissants and coffee for breakfast – perked up and decided to walk down the road to Parliament, no doubt in the hope of spotting a coup d’état.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Breakfast Club, Shoreditch
The Breakfast Club
2 - 4 Rufus St
Shoreditch
N1 6PE
020 7729 5252
www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com
by T.N. Toost
Say you occasionally work with a man who is dating a divorcee with a daughter he charitably describes as a “free spirit.” Say you’re going to London, and the daughter lives there; she is American, but lived in Toronto for a few years and therefore says she’s Canadian because it sounds more sophisticated. She modeled when younger and studied French literature at uni and moved to London because the American city she lived in wasn’t exciting enough for her. Say you yourself have a healthy distrust of people who move because they feel too good for their current surroundings and have a thirst for adventure, because these people are the kinds of people who can’t make their own lives interesting and depend on others to do it for them – that these are the kinds of people who, thoroughly bored, are thoroughly boring. What kind of place would they suggest for breakfast? Further, why would you ever go there?
I found myself asking the latter question on a Thursday morning at the Hoxton Breakfast Club. The eighties décor gives one the unmistakable sense that an incredible amount of thought went into every detail, and serves as a wonderful reminder that good design doesn’t betray effort. There were unflattering high-rise jeans and shirts tied around small waists. Fairly good double espressos were trumpeted out by our waitress, and then a man with an amazing neon watch brought out the plates.
We’d agreed to split the All American and the Full Monty. My partner’s pancakes were nowhere near being American; small, dry, hard and cold, they barely benefited from some of the syrup that tried to pass as maple. The eggs were large and had bright orange yolks, which spoke well for them, but their watery tastelessness reminded me why I don’t often order poached eggs. The vegetarian sausage was a lump of mashed vegetables, formed into a patty and left on its own for someone to discover and not enjoy. My Full Monty was better – beautiful eggs, fried, with standard bacon, standard sausage, standard black pudding, standard etc. I liked the Espresso and the bacon, but only because the English versions are so immensely superior to what we usually get.
2 - 4 Rufus St
Shoreditch
N1 6PE
020 7729 5252
www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com
by T.N. Toost
Say you occasionally work with a man who is dating a divorcee with a daughter he charitably describes as a “free spirit.” Say you’re going to London, and the daughter lives there; she is American, but lived in Toronto for a few years and therefore says she’s Canadian because it sounds more sophisticated. She modeled when younger and studied French literature at uni and moved to London because the American city she lived in wasn’t exciting enough for her. Say you yourself have a healthy distrust of people who move because they feel too good for their current surroundings and have a thirst for adventure, because these people are the kinds of people who can’t make their own lives interesting and depend on others to do it for them – that these are the kinds of people who, thoroughly bored, are thoroughly boring. What kind of place would they suggest for breakfast? Further, why would you ever go there?
I found myself asking the latter question on a Thursday morning at the Hoxton Breakfast Club. The eighties décor gives one the unmistakable sense that an incredible amount of thought went into every detail, and serves as a wonderful reminder that good design doesn’t betray effort. There were unflattering high-rise jeans and shirts tied around small waists. Fairly good double espressos were trumpeted out by our waitress, and then a man with an amazing neon watch brought out the plates.
We’d agreed to split the All American and the Full Monty. My partner’s pancakes were nowhere near being American; small, dry, hard and cold, they barely benefited from some of the syrup that tried to pass as maple. The eggs were large and had bright orange yolks, which spoke well for them, but their watery tastelessness reminded me why I don’t often order poached eggs. The vegetarian sausage was a lump of mashed vegetables, formed into a patty and left on its own for someone to discover and not enjoy. My Full Monty was better – beautiful eggs, fried, with standard bacon, standard sausage, standard black pudding, standard etc. I liked the Espresso and the bacon, but only because the English versions are so immensely superior to what we usually get.
In the end, the answers to my questions should have been clear from the beginning: a girl who leaves the States for London seeking excitement would, of course, urge upon us a restaurant with a 1980s American theme serving an "American" breakfast, and this breakfast would, overall, be far inferior to what we would have gotten back home, and why we would have ever followed her advice in the first place would be something I would not know.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
The Diner, Camden Town
The Diner
2 Jamestown Rd
Camden Town
NW1 7BY
020 7485 5223
www.goodlifediner.com
by Fi Tatta
T hjs ujsibar fvj fwiw j thab nab ns wfru
It seemed to me that, dining with Malcolm Eggs, one ought really to let him pick the breakfast venue. His expertise is well-known, one worries that to do otherwise might seem an unwarranted slight.
Although we could not be said to know one another well, we had discovered certain peculiar symmetries; we are both, for example, speakers of the mostly-forgotten, unpronounceable language of Coh. Dreaming, as speakers of that language often do, in that tongue, we had perhaps already encountered one another in dreams. Perhaps not.
“Andiamo,” he declared, as he strode towards The Diner in Camden Town. Never one to refuse a challenge I retorted: “vado” and followed behind. Camden before noon is quiescent; we were the noisiest people on the street by far. And Malcolm’s trademark sword-stick cut quite the dash, tap-tapping on the pavement as we scurried towards that purveyor of fine American-style produce.
“Keep up!” he shouted back at me – he had already sat down at the red banquette seating and was perusing the menu. Evidently Malcolm had forgotten the war-wound which sometimes hampers me… or he had chosen to forget it.
Sublimely, the place was almost empty but not quite – affording us enough privacy to discuss the rather serious business which had brought us together. We ordered – the food arrived quickly, though not with unseemly haste, nothing was forgotten and the water – gods be praised – came with ice in and without being requested.
I thoroughly enjoyed the dish that was set before me; the elements which ought to be crisp were perfectly so, while those parts which should be sweet, damp, moist, were exquisite sui generis. The service, also, was charming – the waiter so friendly that I rather suspected Malcolm of flirting until he reminded me that his tastes lie in quite another direction.
He had ordered the “Hungry Man Breakfast” of eggs, sausages, beans, mushrooms and hash-browns. Breakfast connoisseur that he is, he had of course picked the place with care and the food was excellently done. Although I rather suspected that the sweetener supplied with my meal had not come from the sugar mines of Uruguay as Malcolm had promised me. Conceivably, he had been in jest.
Our discussion turned to certain private matters concerning the land of Coh which can scarcely be of relevance to the readers here; I thought little of The Diner until I came to write this short account of our expedition.
“No, no,” said Malcolm when he saw it, “it’s scarcely a review if you haven’t mentioned what you ate,” although he backed down when I explained, of course, that I had.
2 Jamestown Rd
Camden Town
NW1 7BY
020 7485 5223
www.goodlifediner.com
by Fi Tatta
T hjs ujsibar fvj fwiw j thab nab ns wfru
It seemed to me that, dining with Malcolm Eggs, one ought really to let him pick the breakfast venue. His expertise is well-known, one worries that to do otherwise might seem an unwarranted slight.
Although we could not be said to know one another well, we had discovered certain peculiar symmetries; we are both, for example, speakers of the mostly-forgotten, unpronounceable language of Coh. Dreaming, as speakers of that language often do, in that tongue, we had perhaps already encountered one another in dreams. Perhaps not.
“Andiamo,” he declared, as he strode towards The Diner in Camden Town. Never one to refuse a challenge I retorted: “vado” and followed behind. Camden before noon is quiescent; we were the noisiest people on the street by far. And Malcolm’s trademark sword-stick cut quite the dash, tap-tapping on the pavement as we scurried towards that purveyor of fine American-style produce.
“Keep up!” he shouted back at me – he had already sat down at the red banquette seating and was perusing the menu. Evidently Malcolm had forgotten the war-wound which sometimes hampers me… or he had chosen to forget it.
Sublimely, the place was almost empty but not quite – affording us enough privacy to discuss the rather serious business which had brought us together. We ordered – the food arrived quickly, though not with unseemly haste, nothing was forgotten and the water – gods be praised – came with ice in and without being requested.
I thoroughly enjoyed the dish that was set before me; the elements which ought to be crisp were perfectly so, while those parts which should be sweet, damp, moist, were exquisite sui generis. The service, also, was charming – the waiter so friendly that I rather suspected Malcolm of flirting until he reminded me that his tastes lie in quite another direction.
He had ordered the “Hungry Man Breakfast” of eggs, sausages, beans, mushrooms and hash-browns. Breakfast connoisseur that he is, he had of course picked the place with care and the food was excellently done. Although I rather suspected that the sweetener supplied with my meal had not come from the sugar mines of Uruguay as Malcolm had promised me. Conceivably, he had been in jest.
Our discussion turned to certain private matters concerning the land of Coh which can scarcely be of relevance to the readers here; I thought little of The Diner until I came to write this short account of our expedition.
“No, no,” said Malcolm when he saw it, “it’s scarcely a review if you haven’t mentioned what you ate,” although he backed down when I explained, of course, that I had.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
A note from Brazil: Casa Caminho do Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro
Casa Caminho do Corcovado
Rua Filinto de Almeida 283
Cosme Velho
Rio de Janeiro
22241-170
Brazil
+55 21 2265-2124
by Nelson Griddle
Look at Brazil on the map and you’ll notice there’s a lot of it.
Come down to breakfast at the average Brazilian pousada (that’s 'bed and breakfast' to those without a smattering of Portuguese) and you’ll be compelled to the same conclusion.
At Casa Caminho do Corcovado in the hills of Rio, the banquet that is Brazilian breakfast unfurls each morning with predictable splendour. The meal begins with tropical fruit juices, then plates of chopped pawpaw, mango and pineapple, far fresher and juicier than anything you can get in the UK. Then scrambled eggs (perhaps a trifle too salty, and that is my only complaint), lovely soft white rolls, a variety of bread, butter, three different jams, coconut cake, ham and cheese.
Oh, and then there’s a fruitbowl just in case you’re still peckish. And did I mention the box of Frosties?
The Brazilians do not skimp on breakfast. The most important meal of the day is just as vibrant and plentiful as everything else in this big-ass (and I mean this in every sense) country.
At Casa Corcovada it’s mighty tasty too. The coffee surges forth from one of those thermos jugs where you have to press down on a top button to get the liquid to pour, the ones I always associate with coffee breaks at mind-numblingly tedious corporate training sessions. But the coffee that comes out of the thermos at Casa Caminho do Corcovado turns out to be excellent – fresh and hot and smooth. A worthy cure for too many Caipirinias the night before. But that is another story.
Rua Filinto de Almeida 283
Cosme Velho
Rio de Janeiro
22241-170
Brazil
+55 21 2265-2124
by Nelson Griddle
Look at Brazil on the map and you’ll notice there’s a lot of it.
Come down to breakfast at the average Brazilian pousada (that’s 'bed and breakfast' to those without a smattering of Portuguese) and you’ll be compelled to the same conclusion.
At Casa Caminho do Corcovado in the hills of Rio, the banquet that is Brazilian breakfast unfurls each morning with predictable splendour. The meal begins with tropical fruit juices, then plates of chopped pawpaw, mango and pineapple, far fresher and juicier than anything you can get in the UK. Then scrambled eggs (perhaps a trifle too salty, and that is my only complaint), lovely soft white rolls, a variety of bread, butter, three different jams, coconut cake, ham and cheese.
Oh, and then there’s a fruitbowl just in case you’re still peckish. And did I mention the box of Frosties?
The Brazilians do not skimp on breakfast. The most important meal of the day is just as vibrant and plentiful as everything else in this big-ass (and I mean this in every sense) country.
At Casa Corcovada it’s mighty tasty too. The coffee surges forth from one of those thermos jugs where you have to press down on a top button to get the liquid to pour, the ones I always associate with coffee breaks at mind-numblingly tedious corporate training sessions. But the coffee that comes out of the thermos at Casa Caminho do Corcovado turns out to be excellent – fresh and hot and smooth. A worthy cure for too many Caipirinias the night before. But that is another story.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Mouse & de Lotz Cafe, Dalston
Mouse & de Lotz Cafe
103 Shacklewell Lane
E8 2EB
0203 489 8082
www.mousedelotz.com
by Jane Rasher
As a former resident of Shacklewell Lane, I'd been feeling a tad ambivalent about Mouse & de Lotz. You know, out of that jaded sensibility that takes hold once you've lived in an inner-city neighbourhood long enough to pre-date its most recent innovators: 'But I was here first!' your inner pioneer wails. 'In the mornings of old, I used to be greeted by yellow bulletin boards crying murder, not a quaintly chalked menu offering sun dried tomato sandwiches, Square Mile coffee and zucchini cake.' Well, yes, but you didn't set up a light and airy deli-caff in a disused shop, did you? Well, no.
And with that realisation, I walked the 15 minutes from my ever so slightly grittier new neighbourhood, back down memory lane to breakfast with a former flatmate. Feeling like locals, we compared recollections of the 'bad old days' of 2007 and pondered the march of the artisan eatery and the impact on the area's traditional Turkish stronghold. Variety, we decided, was the spice of Dalston and who were we to stand, po-faced, in the way of multicultural entrepreneurship such as that of Nadia Mousawi and Victoria de Lotz? Well we'd be fools not to appreciate the good taste and humour that can couple mismatched charity shop-salvage tea cups with vintage postcards bearing such punchy annotations as 'Jesus was a cross dresser.'
I made a similarly un-PC faux pas when mispronouncing my order of Bircher muesli as if it related to Islamic dress. Not so clever now are we? But the waiter took it with good grace and tactfully explained the soaking process that distinguished the uncooked oat concoction from your Alpens and your Jordans. I was presented with a snazzy almond, passion fruit & natural yoghurt variation on Dr. Bircher-Benner's 1890s recipe; part sharp bite from the gem-like pulp, seed & flake topping, part milky, gloopy goodness beneath. My muesli was served up in a recycled Bonne Maman jam jar, which I think would improve most things, from flowers to frogspawn (which, if we're going for the gross-out vote, my brekkie did slightly resemble). Together with its deservedly reputed restorative effects, however, it was the perfect comfort food accompaniment to a lengthy monologue on the twin peaks and troughs of career and romance. By the time Esther could bear to listen no longer, this marvellous mush can only have improved. Would that more of life's pleasures were as amenable to distraction, and for £3.50 at that.
103 Shacklewell Lane
E8 2EB
0203 489 8082
www.mousedelotz.com
by Jane Rasher
As a former resident of Shacklewell Lane, I'd been feeling a tad ambivalent about Mouse & de Lotz. You know, out of that jaded sensibility that takes hold once you've lived in an inner-city neighbourhood long enough to pre-date its most recent innovators: 'But I was here first!' your inner pioneer wails. 'In the mornings of old, I used to be greeted by yellow bulletin boards crying murder, not a quaintly chalked menu offering sun dried tomato sandwiches, Square Mile coffee and zucchini cake.' Well, yes, but you didn't set up a light and airy deli-caff in a disused shop, did you? Well, no.
And with that realisation, I walked the 15 minutes from my ever so slightly grittier new neighbourhood, back down memory lane to breakfast with a former flatmate. Feeling like locals, we compared recollections of the 'bad old days' of 2007 and pondered the march of the artisan eatery and the impact on the area's traditional Turkish stronghold. Variety, we decided, was the spice of Dalston and who were we to stand, po-faced, in the way of multicultural entrepreneurship such as that of Nadia Mousawi and Victoria de Lotz? Well we'd be fools not to appreciate the good taste and humour that can couple mismatched charity shop-salvage tea cups with vintage postcards bearing such punchy annotations as 'Jesus was a cross dresser.'
I made a similarly un-PC faux pas when mispronouncing my order of Bircher muesli as if it related to Islamic dress. Not so clever now are we? But the waiter took it with good grace and tactfully explained the soaking process that distinguished the uncooked oat concoction from your Alpens and your Jordans. I was presented with a snazzy almond, passion fruit & natural yoghurt variation on Dr. Bircher-Benner's 1890s recipe; part sharp bite from the gem-like pulp, seed & flake topping, part milky, gloopy goodness beneath. My muesli was served up in a recycled Bonne Maman jam jar, which I think would improve most things, from flowers to frogspawn (which, if we're going for the gross-out vote, my brekkie did slightly resemble). Together with its deservedly reputed restorative effects, however, it was the perfect comfort food accompaniment to a lengthy monologue on the twin peaks and troughs of career and romance. By the time Esther could bear to listen no longer, this marvellous mush can only have improved. Would that more of life's pleasures were as amenable to distraction, and for £3.50 at that.
Friday, August 05, 2011
Workers Cafe, Archway
Workers Cafe
740 Holloway Rd
Archway
N19 3JF
020 7281 5333
by Fi Tatta
A guy had broken my heart. Broken it like he'd intended to all along, like he'd been playing a long game since the day we met, broken it like he meant it.
He'd done the job thoroughly. My heart was shattered like the crazed glass of his dropped iPhone.
It's at times like these that one really needs breakfast. In my case, a dirty breakfast - the kind of breakfast that would meet my mood. Sparkling glassware and linen tablecloths and thick fingers of homemade bread would only have presented an appalling contrast with my inner despair. I needed a greasy spoon.
I entered the Workers Cafe in Archway (no apostrophe, no need to bother with such trivialities) in a haze of tears. And I ordered the breakfast, expecting lumpen eggs, grey sausages, a limp disaster of bacon. But, I was mistaken. Don't get me wrong. This isn't good food. It's bad food. But it's bad food done well.
There were piles of crunchy hash browns. Simple sausages with crisply browned skins. Fluffy scrambled eggs. A puddle of perfectly normal baked beans. There was even a little disc of bubble and squeak. It was the Platonic ideal of an ordinary fry-up, and yet how far we usually fall from ordinariness. I would eat it again. In fact I have done. It had the simplistic comfort I needed, the sense that a breakfast just like this has been eaten many millions of times, will be eaten millions of times in the future.
It is a curious thing, the end of a relationship. You end up carrying around the shared secrets, the hidden invented mutual language even though the thing to which those secrets appertained is gone and the only other native speaker of that language is vanished. I imagine that ex-KGB agents still sometimes find codewords and ciphers playing on their tongue as I remember that exact way he would tap my shoulder three times very softly which meant, in our symbolic language "I love you".
And then, eventually, will we pull out the same tired words, the same once-adorable gestures, for a new partner, who will not know their origin? We hope that love will bring something new out in us each time, but perhaps that is only an illusion. We are who we are.
Breakfast, curiously, is a kind of solace for such thoughts. Perhaps there was once an ur-sausage, a first slice of toast. Probably there was some moment when we first tasted a fried egg. It is lost to us now. But the need for breakfast does not go away because the first breakfast is gone. More important than recapturing the perfect breakfast is accepting one's longing for breakfast, and being willing to take what delight is available in the breakfast before you.
I did not expect to be reminded of delight by the Workers Cafe. But I was.
740 Holloway Rd
Archway
N19 3JF
020 7281 5333
by Fi Tatta
A guy had broken my heart. Broken it like he'd intended to all along, like he'd been playing a long game since the day we met, broken it like he meant it.
He'd done the job thoroughly. My heart was shattered like the crazed glass of his dropped iPhone.
It's at times like these that one really needs breakfast. In my case, a dirty breakfast - the kind of breakfast that would meet my mood. Sparkling glassware and linen tablecloths and thick fingers of homemade bread would only have presented an appalling contrast with my inner despair. I needed a greasy spoon.
I entered the Workers Cafe in Archway (no apostrophe, no need to bother with such trivialities) in a haze of tears. And I ordered the breakfast, expecting lumpen eggs, grey sausages, a limp disaster of bacon. But, I was mistaken. Don't get me wrong. This isn't good food. It's bad food. But it's bad food done well.
There were piles of crunchy hash browns. Simple sausages with crisply browned skins. Fluffy scrambled eggs. A puddle of perfectly normal baked beans. There was even a little disc of bubble and squeak. It was the Platonic ideal of an ordinary fry-up, and yet how far we usually fall from ordinariness. I would eat it again. In fact I have done. It had the simplistic comfort I needed, the sense that a breakfast just like this has been eaten many millions of times, will be eaten millions of times in the future.
It is a curious thing, the end of a relationship. You end up carrying around the shared secrets, the hidden invented mutual language even though the thing to which those secrets appertained is gone and the only other native speaker of that language is vanished. I imagine that ex-KGB agents still sometimes find codewords and ciphers playing on their tongue as I remember that exact way he would tap my shoulder three times very softly which meant, in our symbolic language "I love you".
And then, eventually, will we pull out the same tired words, the same once-adorable gestures, for a new partner, who will not know their origin? We hope that love will bring something new out in us each time, but perhaps that is only an illusion. We are who we are.
Breakfast, curiously, is a kind of solace for such thoughts. Perhaps there was once an ur-sausage, a first slice of toast. Probably there was some moment when we first tasted a fried egg. It is lost to us now. But the need for breakfast does not go away because the first breakfast is gone. More important than recapturing the perfect breakfast is accepting one's longing for breakfast, and being willing to take what delight is available in the breakfast before you.
I did not expect to be reminded of delight by the Workers Cafe. But I was.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Elmo's Diner, North Carolina, USA
Elmo's Diner
9th St. Shopping District.
776 9th Street
Durham, NC 27705
USA
(919) 416-3823
by Joyce Carol Oats
Growing up north of the Mason-Dixon line, you hear rumours about what goes on beneath it. Sometimes you develop prejudices. For example, when I arrived in Durham, North Carolina, a former tobacco town, I had a very strong prejudice in favour of southern cuisine. How could I not? Buttermilk fried chicken. Red velvet cupcake. Southern Living magazine.
Some southern specialties have migrated north. Some have not. For my first Durham breakfast, I wanted one thing: biscuits and sausage gravy.
‘Biscuits and gravy?’ said Companion Primatologist, a vegetarian. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that I am a culinary adventurer?'
‘Sure,’ said CP. ‘Right. I’ll have the blueberry pancakes.’
In retrospect, my reaction to the biscuits and gravy is somewhat surprising because, really, what did I actually expect? Scones with some kind of sausagey brown sauce? Right. What was set in front of me instead (with a side of grits, natch) was a plate covered in a white substance with small brown chunks in it. Newsflash: sausage gravy is sort of a thick, viscous roux with small chunks of sausage floating in it.
‘This looks disgusting,’ I said to CP.
‘These pancakes are delicious,’ CP said.
I prodded one of the white sauce-clad lumps with a fork. It did a slight wobble. So did my bottom lip.
How best to describe the flavour of a sausage-gravy covered-biscuit without comparing it to infant sick? I’m not sure.
Here, instead, are some other key facts: the grits were good (buttery, gritty). CP’s pancakes were fluffy and sweet. The atmosphere was lovely - lots of nice jolly Americans starting their days with big, hearty plates. The coffee was refilled frequently, in those nice thick indestructible white American diner mugs (you can buy your own, and thank goodness for that). I still love buttermilk fried chicken and red velvet cake and Southern Living.
It was also the first time I have ever gone out for breakfast and not finished my food.
9th St. Shopping District.
776 9th Street
Durham, NC 27705
USA
(919) 416-3823
by Joyce Carol Oats
Growing up north of the Mason-Dixon line, you hear rumours about what goes on beneath it. Sometimes you develop prejudices. For example, when I arrived in Durham, North Carolina, a former tobacco town, I had a very strong prejudice in favour of southern cuisine. How could I not? Buttermilk fried chicken. Red velvet cupcake. Southern Living magazine.
Some southern specialties have migrated north. Some have not. For my first Durham breakfast, I wanted one thing: biscuits and sausage gravy.
‘Biscuits and gravy?’ said Companion Primatologist, a vegetarian. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that I am a culinary adventurer?'
‘Sure,’ said CP. ‘Right. I’ll have the blueberry pancakes.’
In retrospect, my reaction to the biscuits and gravy is somewhat surprising because, really, what did I actually expect? Scones with some kind of sausagey brown sauce? Right. What was set in front of me instead (with a side of grits, natch) was a plate covered in a white substance with small brown chunks in it. Newsflash: sausage gravy is sort of a thick, viscous roux with small chunks of sausage floating in it.
‘This looks disgusting,’ I said to CP.
‘These pancakes are delicious,’ CP said.
I prodded one of the white sauce-clad lumps with a fork. It did a slight wobble. So did my bottom lip.
How best to describe the flavour of a sausage-gravy covered-biscuit without comparing it to infant sick? I’m not sure.
Here, instead, are some other key facts: the grits were good (buttery, gritty). CP’s pancakes were fluffy and sweet. The atmosphere was lovely - lots of nice jolly Americans starting their days with big, hearty plates. The coffee was refilled frequently, in those nice thick indestructible white American diner mugs (you can buy your own, and thank goodness for that). I still love buttermilk fried chicken and red velvet cake and Southern Living.
It was also the first time I have ever gone out for breakfast and not finished my food.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar, Peckham
Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar
10th Floor
Peckham Multi-Storey Carpark
95a Rye Lane
Peckham
SE15 4ST
0758 288 4574
www.frankscafe.org.uk
Open summer only (check website for dates)
Brunch served on Sundays and some Saturdays from about midday.
by Malcolm Eggs
It started with a broken lift and a walk up a staircase. It stank. It was an experience to make you wonder if this cult of the derelict and disused is really that much of a good thing. Is it to trick us all into accepting some inevitable descent into wet-floored impoverishment? But anyway, learn from our mistake - walk the route you'd drive if you were driving.
On the sixth storey we emerged into a system of ramps, empty parking slots and the outskirts of a group sculpture show. On the ninth storey a friendly girl in a wooden booth handed us a list of exhibits: we made our way up onto the roof past some polished steel bollards and two large inflatable rats. It was a sunny day. We ordered coffee.
A mystery: a barbecue covered entirely in fat sausages. They were making seductive, excruciating cracking sounds but the brunch board opened with "green salad" and ended with "Victoria sponge". Not a sausage to be seen. "Are they for the staff?" my companion wondered. But that would be an unusual cruelty - ten sausage apiece for the staff but none for those who had just braved the stairwell. When a waitress climbed up onto the counter and rubbed out half of the menu it seemed solved, but the 'Toulouse sausage £1.8' she added had its own strangeness. Just a sausage? Nothing else on the rejigged list - mushrooms on toast, chicken caesar salad - seemed so stark, so singular...
The service at Frank's is very relaxed. Waiting at the bar to order, I had leisure to switch around five times between endearment (it's a Sunday! I feel young.) and frustration (there are hardly any customers! Two of you seem to be working on one drink!). Our order was a charred aubergine dish with spring onion, feta and mint (£6.70), tomatoes on toast with aioli (£5), and sausage.
The aubergine arrived first, followed around ten minutes later ("it comes when it comes!") by the tomato-ast. It hurts a bit to think about it: it tasted so absolutely good. Warm tomatoes, laced with thyme, soaking balmy reds and oranges into bitter-sharp sourdough, were sweeter and lovelier than a kitten in a Kinder Egg. And at the risk of sounding like an idiot, the aubergine dish tasted a bit like an expensive sketch of Constantinople involving two or three wisps of smoke rising from behind various domed roofs. The mysterious sausage was nowhere to be seen. "The food comes when it comes!" they insisted, before realising the kitchen had no knowledge of our sausage deficit. Finally, a plate with two occupants turned up: the bangers were fatter than they were long, meaty and plump, crisp of skin and dense of centre. Just great sausages.
The view from Frank's hosts just about every iconic landmark known to London. I've heard you can see as far as Wembley Stadium but I always forget to check. This beauty is almost totally inverted in the form of the heinous horrors that dwell inside the festival-style toilets. Like a talented artist with a drink problem, Frank's delights and frustrates and is very easy to talk about.
Post-script: Weirdly enough, on the night of posting this review I happened to meet Frank himself, who completely agreed abut the toilets and was in the process of replacing them. The lift had been fixed, too.
10th Floor
Peckham Multi-Storey Carpark
95a Rye Lane
Peckham
SE15 4ST
0758 288 4574
www.frankscafe.org.uk
Open summer only (check website for dates)
Brunch served on Sundays and some Saturdays from about midday.
by Malcolm Eggs
It started with a broken lift and a walk up a staircase. It stank. It was an experience to make you wonder if this cult of the derelict and disused is really that much of a good thing. Is it to trick us all into accepting some inevitable descent into wet-floored impoverishment? But anyway, learn from our mistake - walk the route you'd drive if you were driving.
On the sixth storey we emerged into a system of ramps, empty parking slots and the outskirts of a group sculpture show. On the ninth storey a friendly girl in a wooden booth handed us a list of exhibits: we made our way up onto the roof past some polished steel bollards and two large inflatable rats. It was a sunny day. We ordered coffee.
A mystery: a barbecue covered entirely in fat sausages. They were making seductive, excruciating cracking sounds but the brunch board opened with "green salad" and ended with "Victoria sponge". Not a sausage to be seen. "Are they for the staff?" my companion wondered. But that would be an unusual cruelty - ten sausage apiece for the staff but none for those who had just braved the stairwell. When a waitress climbed up onto the counter and rubbed out half of the menu it seemed solved, but the 'Toulouse sausage £1.8' she added had its own strangeness. Just a sausage? Nothing else on the rejigged list - mushrooms on toast, chicken caesar salad - seemed so stark, so singular...
The service at Frank's is very relaxed. Waiting at the bar to order, I had leisure to switch around five times between endearment (it's a Sunday! I feel young.) and frustration (there are hardly any customers! Two of you seem to be working on one drink!). Our order was a charred aubergine dish with spring onion, feta and mint (£6.70), tomatoes on toast with aioli (£5), and sausage.
The aubergine arrived first, followed around ten minutes later ("it comes when it comes!") by the tomato-ast. It hurts a bit to think about it: it tasted so absolutely good. Warm tomatoes, laced with thyme, soaking balmy reds and oranges into bitter-sharp sourdough, were sweeter and lovelier than a kitten in a Kinder Egg. And at the risk of sounding like an idiot, the aubergine dish tasted a bit like an expensive sketch of Constantinople involving two or three wisps of smoke rising from behind various domed roofs. The mysterious sausage was nowhere to be seen. "The food comes when it comes!" they insisted, before realising the kitchen had no knowledge of our sausage deficit. Finally, a plate with two occupants turned up: the bangers were fatter than they were long, meaty and plump, crisp of skin and dense of centre. Just great sausages.
The view from Frank's hosts just about every iconic landmark known to London. I've heard you can see as far as Wembley Stadium but I always forget to check. This beauty is almost totally inverted in the form of the heinous horrors that dwell inside the festival-style toilets. Like a talented artist with a drink problem, Frank's delights and frustrates and is very easy to talk about.
Post-script: Weirdly enough, on the night of posting this review I happened to meet Frank himself, who completely agreed abut the toilets and was in the process of replacing them. The lift had been fixed, too.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
A Little of What You Fancy, Dalston
A Little of What You Fancy
464 Kingsland Road
Dalston
E8 4AE
020 7275 0060
www.alittleofwhatyoufancy.info
by Jane Rasher
...does you good, they say. It’s debatable, however, whether 'little' applies to the portions my friend Scott and I received at this, Kingsland Road’s first proper bistro.
Taking our cue from the bizarre, indecisive weather, we took half an hour to place our orders. But how could we not, when all about us was such intrigue? Given the unmarked door, it’s a challenge in itself just arriving. As you emerge, tacit congratulations are passed in glances from the other clued-up diners who've followed the trail of word of mouth and newsprint to this bonnie, bright interior.
A query of the origins of the Arnold Bennett omelette received a response of ‘something to do with Gordon Bennett, maybe?’ from the kitchen. I owed it to my English Lit. BA to half-knowingly order this offering, especially when I learned it was to be a smoked haddock and parmesan riot. I doubted the Edwardian author would have approved of such posturing, but Wikipedia assures me he was regarded as a bit of a social climber; this was his breakfast of choice whenever he overnighted at the Savoy. I tucked in untroubled. It was a gooey, nourishing creation beautifully offset by the bite of watercress and the zest of my freshly squeezed OJ.
Scott made short work of his homemade baked beans, eggs and bacon, and we were left in peace to natter and digest before moving on to Greek yoghurt and fruit compote. Fragments of damson-coloured plum and cherry preserves were a delight to dig out from a breakfast that thought it was a dessert. So much so, we felt we'd had a slap up meal.
Fancy is right - our food rang in at 15 quid each - but against the scrubbed salvage furniture, naked light bulbs and bare concrete floor, this also felt like an unfussy, wholesome treat. I didn't need Wikipedia to tell me that Arnold would have had seconds.
464 Kingsland Road
Dalston
E8 4AE
020 7275 0060
www.alittleofwhatyoufancy.info
by Jane Rasher
...does you good, they say. It’s debatable, however, whether 'little' applies to the portions my friend Scott and I received at this, Kingsland Road’s first proper bistro.
Taking our cue from the bizarre, indecisive weather, we took half an hour to place our orders. But how could we not, when all about us was such intrigue? Given the unmarked door, it’s a challenge in itself just arriving. As you emerge, tacit congratulations are passed in glances from the other clued-up diners who've followed the trail of word of mouth and newsprint to this bonnie, bright interior.
A query of the origins of the Arnold Bennett omelette received a response of ‘something to do with Gordon Bennett, maybe?’ from the kitchen. I owed it to my English Lit. BA to half-knowingly order this offering, especially when I learned it was to be a smoked haddock and parmesan riot. I doubted the Edwardian author would have approved of such posturing, but Wikipedia assures me he was regarded as a bit of a social climber; this was his breakfast of choice whenever he overnighted at the Savoy. I tucked in untroubled. It was a gooey, nourishing creation beautifully offset by the bite of watercress and the zest of my freshly squeezed OJ.
Scott made short work of his homemade baked beans, eggs and bacon, and we were left in peace to natter and digest before moving on to Greek yoghurt and fruit compote. Fragments of damson-coloured plum and cherry preserves were a delight to dig out from a breakfast that thought it was a dessert. So much so, we felt we'd had a slap up meal.
Fancy is right - our food rang in at 15 quid each - but against the scrubbed salvage furniture, naked light bulbs and bare concrete floor, this also felt like an unfussy, wholesome treat. I didn't need Wikipedia to tell me that Arnold would have had seconds.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Nice Croissant, Wanstead
Nice Croissant
119A High Street
Wanstead E11 2RL
020 8530 1129
www.nicecroissant.co.uk
by Egon Toast
The reveille is sounded for authentic British cuisine: that bespectacled chap Blumenthal is, as ever, at the forefront, his latest offering a meticulously researched trip across the UK’s historical palate. I can’t wait for the man to bring out a range of goodies aimed at the working man – ‘HB Sauce’, perhaps, a taste of the real, historic London, underscored with notes of tanners’ yards and stevedore sweat.
Out on the city’s periphery, blasted by economic imperatives, instances of venison scotch eggs or poached ling are thin on the ground – instead, the closest we get to heritage nosh is the dear old Full English, and the pie and mash shop. Wanstead High Street has one such example of the latter, an immaculate shrine to a food long past its sell-by date. But just down the road lies something even more delicious – a still-extant example of those first whispers of culinary exoticism from which we now flee.
‘Nice Croissant’ is big on wordplay, and le petit dej. Your favourite breakfast components – pork, cheese, egg – feature heavily, but instead of sitting on a pile of chips or a sea of beans, they’re shoved into a buttery crescent. They’ve picked up the boule and they’ve run with it.
So, I ordered a croque monsieur. Testing their range.
The bread was of the ilk that lives sweating in placcy bags on supermarket shelves, so had dessicated unpleasantly after its grilling. The bechamel carried few hints of excitement, but was sufficiently gooey, if unevenly spread. The ham: pellucid. Barely there. The cheese warmed proceedings up. It always does.
So – not a total dîner de chien, just slightly disappointing. But to improve matters, my latte arrived in one of those curvaceous mini-vases that seem to have fallen from favour, all moues and frothiness, giving the glad eye to my dining partner’s yeomanly mug of tea.
Beside us, some grandparents were treating the young ‘uns to a milkshake. Grandpère, middle finger eagerly following croissant detritus around his plate, listened patiently to tales from home and school. He looked askance at my latte, as every right-thinking elderly gentleman should: “Don’t take it too far, mate – this is Britain, not the bleedin' continent”.
Very on-trend.
119A High Street
Wanstead E11 2RL
020 8530 1129
www.nicecroissant.co.uk
by Egon Toast
The reveille is sounded for authentic British cuisine: that bespectacled chap Blumenthal is, as ever, at the forefront, his latest offering a meticulously researched trip across the UK’s historical palate. I can’t wait for the man to bring out a range of goodies aimed at the working man – ‘HB Sauce’, perhaps, a taste of the real, historic London, underscored with notes of tanners’ yards and stevedore sweat.
Out on the city’s periphery, blasted by economic imperatives, instances of venison scotch eggs or poached ling are thin on the ground – instead, the closest we get to heritage nosh is the dear old Full English, and the pie and mash shop. Wanstead High Street has one such example of the latter, an immaculate shrine to a food long past its sell-by date. But just down the road lies something even more delicious – a still-extant example of those first whispers of culinary exoticism from which we now flee.
‘Nice Croissant’ is big on wordplay, and le petit dej. Your favourite breakfast components – pork, cheese, egg – feature heavily, but instead of sitting on a pile of chips or a sea of beans, they’re shoved into a buttery crescent. They’ve picked up the boule and they’ve run with it.
So, I ordered a croque monsieur. Testing their range.
The bread was of the ilk that lives sweating in placcy bags on supermarket shelves, so had dessicated unpleasantly after its grilling. The bechamel carried few hints of excitement, but was sufficiently gooey, if unevenly spread. The ham: pellucid. Barely there. The cheese warmed proceedings up. It always does.
So – not a total dîner de chien, just slightly disappointing. But to improve matters, my latte arrived in one of those curvaceous mini-vases that seem to have fallen from favour, all moues and frothiness, giving the glad eye to my dining partner’s yeomanly mug of tea.
Beside us, some grandparents were treating the young ‘uns to a milkshake. Grandpère, middle finger eagerly following croissant detritus around his plate, listened patiently to tales from home and school. He looked askance at my latte, as every right-thinking elderly gentleman should: “Don’t take it too far, mate – this is Britain, not the bleedin' continent”.
Very on-trend.
Monday, April 25, 2011
US Dispatch: The Farm of Beverly Hills, California
The Farm of Beverly Hills
439 North Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
+1 (310) 273-5578
California
USA
www.thefarmofbeverlyhills.com
by Emma Ricano
So I’m standing on stage (crate of Heineken) at the top of a North London pub (maroon carpet, vinegar smells) delivering pithy one-liners and the next thing I know, a stocky man in a black suit who looks like a budget version of Tommy Lee Jones is pumping my hand, “I’m gonna make you a star,” he says and thrusts a card into my sweating palm. Turns out he’s a top Hollywood talent agent who can introduce me to Mr and Mrs Money.
A few weeks later I’m on a plane to LA. I call Budget Tommy when I touch down. His assistant says he’s in a meeting and he’ll get right back to me.
Two days later he’s still in a meeting so I hightail it to Beverly Hills and cheer myself up with breakfast at The Farm. The joint’s got a sunshine coloured awning and is bathed in rays and happiness. Wish I could say the same for the waitress who is Surly As All Hell. She slams down my banana stuffed brioche pancakes with a side of whipped butter. She makes me so nervous that my palms sweat like a fat kid's and I drop the side of maple syrup clean onto one half of my pancake. I ask for more syrup and soak the other half. Ten minutes later I am high as Howard Marks.
On my next visit I feel guilty as a Catholic priest for indulging and pinch an inch on my syrupy hips. No casting director was going to hire me with a muffin top like that so I opt for an austere oatmeal. It is watery and grey and I decide then and there I could make better myself, so I do - I ask Surly As All Hell for raisins, muscovado sugar and milk and knock myself out with a new creation. I feel better – life gives you lemons, you make a better oatmeal. I follow up with a dish of seasonal fruits; pineapple, cantaloupe and strawberries. Everything is seasonal in California, including my agent. Still no call from the bitch (male).
I return once more the next day because there’s nothing else to do in LA apart from stare at other people’s abs and wait for the phone to ring. This time I expect Surly As All Hell to recognise me but she gives me another death stare and tosses a menu in my direction. I decide to behave how I want people to see me so I order like a successful American film star. I say get me the vegetable omelette – hold the goat’s cheese, replace the asparagus with spinach, add more oven roasted tomatoes. It tastes good but not great - I wonder whether it would have been a knock-out had I not meddled with it. I order whole wheat toast and drown my sorrows in grape jelly while pummelling my pillowy hips.
What kind of meeting lasts seven days? I order a chocolate muffin and hurl it at the agent’s window. Then I wonder whether he’s been in some kind of accident and vow to call him the next day.
439 North Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
+1 (310) 273-5578
California
USA
www.thefarmofbeverlyhills.com
by Emma Ricano
So I’m standing on stage (crate of Heineken) at the top of a North London pub (maroon carpet, vinegar smells) delivering pithy one-liners and the next thing I know, a stocky man in a black suit who looks like a budget version of Tommy Lee Jones is pumping my hand, “I’m gonna make you a star,” he says and thrusts a card into my sweating palm. Turns out he’s a top Hollywood talent agent who can introduce me to Mr and Mrs Money.
A few weeks later I’m on a plane to LA. I call Budget Tommy when I touch down. His assistant says he’s in a meeting and he’ll get right back to me.
Two days later he’s still in a meeting so I hightail it to Beverly Hills and cheer myself up with breakfast at The Farm. The joint’s got a sunshine coloured awning and is bathed in rays and happiness. Wish I could say the same for the waitress who is Surly As All Hell. She slams down my banana stuffed brioche pancakes with a side of whipped butter. She makes me so nervous that my palms sweat like a fat kid's and I drop the side of maple syrup clean onto one half of my pancake. I ask for more syrup and soak the other half. Ten minutes later I am high as Howard Marks.
On my next visit I feel guilty as a Catholic priest for indulging and pinch an inch on my syrupy hips. No casting director was going to hire me with a muffin top like that so I opt for an austere oatmeal. It is watery and grey and I decide then and there I could make better myself, so I do - I ask Surly As All Hell for raisins, muscovado sugar and milk and knock myself out with a new creation. I feel better – life gives you lemons, you make a better oatmeal. I follow up with a dish of seasonal fruits; pineapple, cantaloupe and strawberries. Everything is seasonal in California, including my agent. Still no call from the bitch (male).
I return once more the next day because there’s nothing else to do in LA apart from stare at other people’s abs and wait for the phone to ring. This time I expect Surly As All Hell to recognise me but she gives me another death stare and tosses a menu in my direction. I decide to behave how I want people to see me so I order like a successful American film star. I say get me the vegetable omelette – hold the goat’s cheese, replace the asparagus with spinach, add more oven roasted tomatoes. It tastes good but not great - I wonder whether it would have been a knock-out had I not meddled with it. I order whole wheat toast and drown my sorrows in grape jelly while pummelling my pillowy hips.
What kind of meeting lasts seven days? I order a chocolate muffin and hurl it at the agent’s window. Then I wonder whether he’s been in some kind of accident and vow to call him the next day.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Daley Bread, Fitzrovia
Daley Bread
20 Gosfield St
Fitzrovia
W1W 6HF
07980 751049
by Ronnie Oak
There’s no menu in Daley Bread. I look at a glass deli counter and I can’t even think of the word menu. I ask the woman what to do. Almost literally: “What do I do?”.
The counter is full of all sorts of stuff and after negotiations conclude we agree I’ll have a sausage and bacon sandwich. There’s an unholy amount of bread offered so I pick the last one on the list, which is ciabatta.
The man behind the counter hears my Irish accent and we talk about rugby. I’m glad I like the sport so I am able to dress phrases like “they just wanted it more” and “the best team won” in a suit of genuine conviction.
This conversational Garryowen hangs in the air for a while as I wait. Yes I want ketchup and I suppose I want it toasted. Mainly I just want it.
It arrives quickly. It’s huge. The sausage is better than most cafe sausages, which shouldn’t really damn it with faint praise if you think about it. The bacon is a bit disappointing, possibly overwhelmed by the amount of sausage. Perhaps I know how it feels. Not a bad complaint though. Some people in the world haven’t got two sausages to rub together God love them.
I get a bottle of water and pay. Jesus, the price of the whole thing is £3.50. I wonder if they charged me for the water as I expected to pay a fiver for just the immense sandwich. It’s great value. I’m pleased.
I like fancy things, and there’s nothing wrong with doing something perversely different than what it says on your tin, but sometimes even an intelligent person must praise utilitarianism.
This isn’t fancy. But it’s the first breakfast I’ve had in Fitzrovia with which I feel almost completely satisfied. I would go back.
20 Gosfield St
Fitzrovia
W1W 6HF
07980 751049
by Ronnie Oak
There’s no menu in Daley Bread. I look at a glass deli counter and I can’t even think of the word menu. I ask the woman what to do. Almost literally: “What do I do?”.
The counter is full of all sorts of stuff and after negotiations conclude we agree I’ll have a sausage and bacon sandwich. There’s an unholy amount of bread offered so I pick the last one on the list, which is ciabatta.
The man behind the counter hears my Irish accent and we talk about rugby. I’m glad I like the sport so I am able to dress phrases like “they just wanted it more” and “the best team won” in a suit of genuine conviction.
This conversational Garryowen hangs in the air for a while as I wait. Yes I want ketchup and I suppose I want it toasted. Mainly I just want it.
It arrives quickly. It’s huge. The sausage is better than most cafe sausages, which shouldn’t really damn it with faint praise if you think about it. The bacon is a bit disappointing, possibly overwhelmed by the amount of sausage. Perhaps I know how it feels. Not a bad complaint though. Some people in the world haven’t got two sausages to rub together God love them.
I get a bottle of water and pay. Jesus, the price of the whole thing is £3.50. I wonder if they charged me for the water as I expected to pay a fiver for just the immense sandwich. It’s great value. I’m pleased.
I like fancy things, and there’s nothing wrong with doing something perversely different than what it says on your tin, but sometimes even an intelligent person must praise utilitarianism.
This isn’t fancy. But it’s the first breakfast I’ve had in Fitzrovia with which I feel almost completely satisfied. I would go back.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Brighton Dispatch: Si Signore, Sydney St
Si Signore
12 Sydney St
Brighton
BN1 4EN
01273 671 266
by Sebastian Forks
12 Sydney St
Brighton
BN1 4EN
01273 671 266
by Sebastian Forks
It is Sunday. It is the afternoon. I am with my family. My son is pale. He is grunting. My wife can’t walk. I am hallucinating. We are yet to eat breakfast. We turn into Si Signore. It is almost empty. A man with a large moustache sits in the corner. He is sitting at a table for one.
A waiter approaches. He is wearing waiter clothes. He smiles apologetically. He sits us in the window. It is raining. We read a giant menu. My son wants a full English. I would like one too, but I am being a vegetarian. I order a veggie breakfast. My wife goes for a plain baked potato. I think the time and the menu and the man sitting in the corner have confused my wife. We are meant to be having breakfast.
My veggie breakfast arrives. What is this? There must be some mistake. There is a bowl in the middle of my plate. I look in the bowl. There is some red liquid in it. A light orange lump is floating in the liquid. It is the baked beans. The baked bean bowl is surrounded by a very small fried egg, some mushrooms, two sausages, toast and some broccoli. The sausages are the deep fried bars of vegetable mixture served up to vegetarians in the days when vegetarians didn’t eat proper vegetarian sausages on account of the fact that they reminded them of the sausages they should not eat. I poke one with my knife. A pea pops out. I examine the egg. It can’t be much bigger than a bull’s eye. The broccoli... I have never had broccoli for breakfast. It looks like it has been boiled or fried, and then buried in dried herbs. I take a bite. I am overwhelmed by oregano. I cannot swallow. I look at my wife.
‘Is that broccoli?’ she says.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Oh,’ she says, grinning.
My wife’s plain baked potato arrives. It is a bit bigger than my egg. It is surrounded by bits of lettuce. The lettuce is not dressed. It looks like grass. I grin at my wife.
‘It looks like grass,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘How’s the broccoli?’
My wife eats the potato and the lettuce in under a minute. She turns to my son. My son is fine. He does not seem to have noticed his bowl of beans. He has not mentioned the size of his egg. There is no broccoli on his plate. He is piling everything onto a piece of toast. There is blood in his cheeks and he is smiling and beginning to speak in words. My wife asks nicely for a bite of his bacon, and a sausage, and some mushrooms. They smile at each other.
When we finish, the man with the moustache gets up. He is tall and big. He goes behind the counter. He does some calculator stuff on the till. He hands me the bill and asks if everything was to my satisfaction. I look at the bill: £21.60. Yes, I say. I look at my son and my wife. They are grinning at me.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Op-Egg: National bacon week - time to pick sides
by Blake Pudding
I have commented in previous posts on unnecessary Americanisms creeping onto the British breakfast menu: English muffins and ‘French Toast’ for example. I have, however, noticed the opposite trend: lumpen English tastes inveigling their way into American-style breakfasts. Twice recently I have ordered that diner stalwart pancakes and bacon, and been give something closer to a piece of boiled gammon than the crispy bacon that I was expecting. It did not go well with the pancakes (though part of me thinks the whole idea of having bacon with something sweet is so inherently stupid that perhaps the flaccid bacon was actually a joke by the chef.)
As I am sure readers are aware, it is national bacon week. This is meant to be a time for celebrating the pig but I can’t help wondering how easily it could descend into factionalism or even civil war. On one hand there will be the no-nonsense Roundheads of the back bacon army and opposing them the Cavaliers of the porcine world, the smoked streaky eaters. At stake is what do you think the purpose of your bacon to be. The Roundheads say that it should be all about piggy meat whereas the Cavaliers demand crisply rendered fat even if it strays dangerously close to Catholic pancetta.
I make no bones about finding back bacon an aberration against breakfasts. If that makes me a Popish traitor in the eyes of most Englishman then so be it. I know that the true bacon is the streaky and the back an usurper who crept in probably around the time of Cromwell (I might have to do a bit more research on this.) Our American cousins’ crispy bacon culture is actually how things used to be over here. Of course they have taken it a little too far and made theirs positively brittle. And what is Canadian bacon (essentially ham) if not an attempt to distance themselves from their powerful neighbours to the South?
So this national bacon week, decide where you stand. Back or streaky? Are you with me or against me?
I have commented in previous posts on unnecessary Americanisms creeping onto the British breakfast menu: English muffins and ‘French Toast’ for example. I have, however, noticed the opposite trend: lumpen English tastes inveigling their way into American-style breakfasts. Twice recently I have ordered that diner stalwart pancakes and bacon, and been give something closer to a piece of boiled gammon than the crispy bacon that I was expecting. It did not go well with the pancakes (though part of me thinks the whole idea of having bacon with something sweet is so inherently stupid that perhaps the flaccid bacon was actually a joke by the chef.)
As I am sure readers are aware, it is national bacon week. This is meant to be a time for celebrating the pig but I can’t help wondering how easily it could descend into factionalism or even civil war. On one hand there will be the no-nonsense Roundheads of the back bacon army and opposing them the Cavaliers of the porcine world, the smoked streaky eaters. At stake is what do you think the purpose of your bacon to be. The Roundheads say that it should be all about piggy meat whereas the Cavaliers demand crisply rendered fat even if it strays dangerously close to Catholic pancetta.
I make no bones about finding back bacon an aberration against breakfasts. If that makes me a Popish traitor in the eyes of most Englishman then so be it. I know that the true bacon is the streaky and the back an usurper who crept in probably around the time of Cromwell (I might have to do a bit more research on this.) Our American cousins’ crispy bacon culture is actually how things used to be over here. Of course they have taken it a little too far and made theirs positively brittle. And what is Canadian bacon (essentially ham) if not an attempt to distance themselves from their powerful neighbours to the South?
So this national bacon week, decide where you stand. Back or streaky? Are you with me or against me?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Homa, Stoke Newington
Homa
71-73 Stoke Newington Church Street
Stoke Newington
N16 0AS
020 7254 2072
by Mariah Dairy
I went whilst still recovering from the trauma of a fry-up a few blocks down at a place called Lydia's. Lydia, or someone who had been trained in her cruel ways, served me the worst breakfast I have ever paid for, leaving me entirely paranoid about this cupcake-heavy stretch of eating establishments. But despite (somehow it's never "because of") conforming wholly to the liberal North London cliché of sourdough, bugaboo pushchairs and locally smoked salmon, Homa turned out to be a tremendous place to eat breakfast.
There's comfortingly spacious minimal décor, all big elegant bay windows and a nice front garden. My Italian sausages were wonderfully fennel-y, nestling against perfectly grilled tomatoes and some sweet little button mushrooms fried in herby butter. The sourdough passed the squishing your tomato-on-top-test with flying colours, holding firm against the omnipresent threat of decomposition. And to top it off, my god, two of the best fried eggs imaginable: the Ritz compared to Lydia's Travelodge.
My companion was very pleased with an Italianised Eggs Benedict - sourdough topped with poached egg, speck ham, provolone cheese and hollandaise. And we were both pleased by the coffee, which had that proper, caramel coloured layer of crema rather than the silty, burnt offerings of too many cafes in the area.
Homa is a good place. It's worth coughing up the extra £3-4 for the Italian sausages alone. Never again will I be tempted to risk the terrifying fingers of brown meat so beloved of Stoke Newington's less reputable haunts. I sipped fresh orange juice: it made me feel as if I too could obtain the rosy glow of our fellow diners, gleefully bouncing angelic chubby cheeked children on their knees.
71-73 Stoke Newington Church Street
Stoke Newington
N16 0AS
020 7254 2072
by Mariah Dairy
I went whilst still recovering from the trauma of a fry-up a few blocks down at a place called Lydia's. Lydia, or someone who had been trained in her cruel ways, served me the worst breakfast I have ever paid for, leaving me entirely paranoid about this cupcake-heavy stretch of eating establishments. But despite (somehow it's never "because of") conforming wholly to the liberal North London cliché of sourdough, bugaboo pushchairs and locally smoked salmon, Homa turned out to be a tremendous place to eat breakfast.
There's comfortingly spacious minimal décor, all big elegant bay windows and a nice front garden. My Italian sausages were wonderfully fennel-y, nestling against perfectly grilled tomatoes and some sweet little button mushrooms fried in herby butter. The sourdough passed the squishing your tomato-on-top-test with flying colours, holding firm against the omnipresent threat of decomposition. And to top it off, my god, two of the best fried eggs imaginable: the Ritz compared to Lydia's Travelodge.
My companion was very pleased with an Italianised Eggs Benedict - sourdough topped with poached egg, speck ham, provolone cheese and hollandaise. And we were both pleased by the coffee, which had that proper, caramel coloured layer of crema rather than the silty, burnt offerings of too many cafes in the area.
Homa is a good place. It's worth coughing up the extra £3-4 for the Italian sausages alone. Never again will I be tempted to risk the terrifying fingers of brown meat so beloved of Stoke Newington's less reputable haunts. I sipped fresh orange juice: it made me feel as if I too could obtain the rosy glow of our fellow diners, gleefully bouncing angelic chubby cheeked children on their knees.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Cafe Olive, Islington
Cafe Olive
42a Penton Street
Islington
N1 9QA
020 7713 6888
by Joyce Carol Oats
A Sunday morning. A romantic escape. A quiet street. A single cafe. In the pleasant haze of recent sleep, you enter, seeking breakfast. It’s a family-run joint: charming. A handful of tables; a kitchen tucked behind a counter; three generations elbowing each other in the small cooking space. What’s for breakfast is not entirely clear: there are hints of grilled halloumi and boiled eggs on the board out front but not indoors. Listings for sandwiches that sound lovely but not right for breakfast. Coffee? Coffee? There’s a coffee machine, but you can't seem to see where the prices are listed.
I just want a bacon sandwich, says your companion. Do you think they could just make a bacon sandwich?
I can make you smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, the waitress announces as you sit down. Do you want that?
It’s not really a question. There’s a packet of smoked salmon sitting in a chiller case, next to a large cake that a liberal hand has daubed with whipped cream baubles. The smoked salmon has been expecting you.
OK! says your companion, in haste.
Sure, sure, you say. You want it to be easy. You order a black coffee. The waitress brings you a latte. That’s fine, too.
You can’t see past the chiller case, but the procedure is vivid in sound and smell: of eggs beating, of toast burning. The waitress emerges to open a window to air out the cafe and then returns to jostle with her colleague. A sharp word, here and there, in a language you don’t speak.
The servings are substantial: two slices of very toasted toast under hefty eggs that serve as a luxurious bed for thick slices of salmon. You look at your companion and he looks at you and you shrug and dig in. It requires strength. It is a breakfast to precede a day of heavy lifting. After half, you are exhausted, but you are not going to waste food, not here. It would be rude. So you both carry on. You chew with courage. You leave nary a crust.
Was it good? says the waitress when she comes to pick up your plates.
Yes, you say, even though you feel a bit sick, because under the circumstances you can be nothing but grateful. Yes!
She smiles. You smile. He smiles.
Your companion pays - it's cheap, of course - and you leave.
Well, you say. That was interesting!
I really didn’t want to eat that, he says. I really just wanted a bacon sandwich. But it was good. Sort of!
Yes! you say. Sort of! There’s nothing like breakfasting at a small cafe when you’re on holiday somewhere unfamiliar, and just eating whatever it is that they happen to be cooking that day. It’s just so authentic! Such an experience!
True, he says. But we’re not on holiday. We’re a five-minute walk from your flat.
True, you say. That is also true.
42a Penton Street
Islington
N1 9QA
020 7713 6888
by Joyce Carol Oats
A Sunday morning. A romantic escape. A quiet street. A single cafe. In the pleasant haze of recent sleep, you enter, seeking breakfast. It’s a family-run joint: charming. A handful of tables; a kitchen tucked behind a counter; three generations elbowing each other in the small cooking space. What’s for breakfast is not entirely clear: there are hints of grilled halloumi and boiled eggs on the board out front but not indoors. Listings for sandwiches that sound lovely but not right for breakfast. Coffee? Coffee? There’s a coffee machine, but you can't seem to see where the prices are listed.
I just want a bacon sandwich, says your companion. Do you think they could just make a bacon sandwich?
I can make you smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, the waitress announces as you sit down. Do you want that?
It’s not really a question. There’s a packet of smoked salmon sitting in a chiller case, next to a large cake that a liberal hand has daubed with whipped cream baubles. The smoked salmon has been expecting you.
OK! says your companion, in haste.
Sure, sure, you say. You want it to be easy. You order a black coffee. The waitress brings you a latte. That’s fine, too.
You can’t see past the chiller case, but the procedure is vivid in sound and smell: of eggs beating, of toast burning. The waitress emerges to open a window to air out the cafe and then returns to jostle with her colleague. A sharp word, here and there, in a language you don’t speak.
The servings are substantial: two slices of very toasted toast under hefty eggs that serve as a luxurious bed for thick slices of salmon. You look at your companion and he looks at you and you shrug and dig in. It requires strength. It is a breakfast to precede a day of heavy lifting. After half, you are exhausted, but you are not going to waste food, not here. It would be rude. So you both carry on. You chew with courage. You leave nary a crust.
Was it good? says the waitress when she comes to pick up your plates.
Yes, you say, even though you feel a bit sick, because under the circumstances you can be nothing but grateful. Yes!
She smiles. You smile. He smiles.
Your companion pays - it's cheap, of course - and you leave.
Well, you say. That was interesting!
I really didn’t want to eat that, he says. I really just wanted a bacon sandwich. But it was good. Sort of!
Yes! you say. Sort of! There’s nothing like breakfasting at a small cafe when you’re on holiday somewhere unfamiliar, and just eating whatever it is that they happen to be cooking that day. It’s just so authentic! Such an experience!
True, he says. But we’re not on holiday. We’re a five-minute walk from your flat.
True, you say. That is also true.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Special Dispatch: Nhow Hotel, Berlin
Nhow Hotel
Stralauer Allee 3
10245 Berlin, Germany
030 2902990
www.nhow-hotels.com/berlin/en
by Sebastian Forks
"People project meaning onto objects. If an object allows you to interact with it, then it becomes part of your being." Karim Rashid
Check in to the world of music. Nhow elevate your stay. Since our arrival late yesterday afternoon, I have taken the strap line for Nhow Berlin - Germany’s brand new design hotel, Europe’s first music concept hotel - at face value. I check in. I listen. I elevate my stay.
Last night I cheated. I got high with my group - partly on the hotel lobby’s techno music, and mostly on Daiquiri, which is a shorter, more chastening version of Mojito. There’s no excuse. It’s made of limes, ice, sugar and mainly white rum, and the rum is easy to taste. Taken before, during or after dinner, it seems to go with everything, is best consumed on pink stools, and gently draws its victim into a place made entirely of words, most of them regrettable.
Now it’s the morning. It is 8 o’clock. I have just woken up. The effects of the Daiquiri are still with me. I can’t wait for breakfast. I am on the hotel’s 1st floor, overlooking a river filled with chunks of ice. My room is enormous. It is designed by Karim Rashid, who works out of New York. I stand in the middle of the room. The floor is made of a special acrylic material, the furniture a mix of futuristic moulds. I especially like the sofa, which looks like the bottom of someone’s mouth. I like to lie on it. A giant flat television sits encased in the room’s dividing wall. Undulating lines of pink cross the floor, and go up the curtains. The bathroom is encased in glass. I feel like I am being dressed by someone who knows a lot about certain types of clothes. It is nice to be made to feel this way.
I sit down on my bed to read up on Karim’s design. It is, says the hotel’s brochure, ‘music for the eyes...a sojourn into a new dimension...’ I’m not sure what this means. Then it says, ‘words...cannot do justice to something that needs to be experienced first-hand – because great design begins at the point where language has reached its limit.’ I put down the brochure. I have reached the limits of hunger. And time is speeding up. I mustn’t be late - I am due to tour the hotel at 9 sharp. I reconnect with my brain’s residual pools of Daiquiri and take a quick shower. I hum and whistle as I dress.
In the lift, I am still humming. I am imagining breakfast. I wonder what music will be played as I eat. I would like some more of the techno. Then I look up and see a colour saturated photograph of Karim. He is in a giant light box. He is on the whole of the ceiling. He stares down at me. He is wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of glasses, and he hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. A woman – a beautiful woman – with half-closed eyes looks up at him. Her mouth is open. She looks like she is going to take a bite out of his cheek. Karim’s mouth is also slightly open. He is looking directly at me. Why is Karim looking at me like that? He is making me feel light headed. I am losing the ability to think. Stop it, Karim.
I enter the breakfast room by way of the lobby, scene of last night’s scene. One final kick from the Daiquiri and I find myself at the foot of a pink plastic lectern. I think I hear music playing. A waiter greets me with a smile. ‘Room number, sir?’ Room number? What is he talking about? I look behind him, into the room. Two huge pink plastic semi-circular breakfast units split the room. Super-white plates lie in piles beneath shelves full of neat little packages of food. Cutlery glints in the winter sun. On either side, white tables – as white as Karim’s t-shirt – line up in perfect inorganic rows. Light pours in from the river.
This morning breakfast is a range of cereals, international right through to locally sourced oats; it is all kinds of bread, and muffins; it is all kinds of eggs - old school, new school, your way; it is smoked salmon in lemon and dill, sausage, cold meats, paper-thin side-plates of prosciutto crudo; it is coffee, tea, juice. I go for the coffee, and a bowl of muesli. I sit down with my group. I see that they’ve had the lot, and toast and butter and small pots of jam compote. I eat my muesli. It is chewy and sweet, and filled with nuts and seeds. I think there’s some coconut in it too. I drink the coffee. It is bitter, and tastes very good indeed. I wonder what it is.
My group leaves. I stare out at the river, which is beginning to look pink. I feel like Karim is right here, next to me, enjoying a quick mint tea, eggs Benedict, French toast and maple syrup. I can’t speak. I am beyond humming. I am completely elevating.
Stralauer Allee 3
10245 Berlin, Germany
030 2902990
www.nhow-hotels.com/berlin/en
by Sebastian Forks
"People project meaning onto objects. If an object allows you to interact with it, then it becomes part of your being." Karim Rashid
Check in to the world of music. Nhow elevate your stay. Since our arrival late yesterday afternoon, I have taken the strap line for Nhow Berlin - Germany’s brand new design hotel, Europe’s first music concept hotel - at face value. I check in. I listen. I elevate my stay.
Last night I cheated. I got high with my group - partly on the hotel lobby’s techno music, and mostly on Daiquiri, which is a shorter, more chastening version of Mojito. There’s no excuse. It’s made of limes, ice, sugar and mainly white rum, and the rum is easy to taste. Taken before, during or after dinner, it seems to go with everything, is best consumed on pink stools, and gently draws its victim into a place made entirely of words, most of them regrettable.
Now it’s the morning. It is 8 o’clock. I have just woken up. The effects of the Daiquiri are still with me. I can’t wait for breakfast. I am on the hotel’s 1st floor, overlooking a river filled with chunks of ice. My room is enormous. It is designed by Karim Rashid, who works out of New York. I stand in the middle of the room. The floor is made of a special acrylic material, the furniture a mix of futuristic moulds. I especially like the sofa, which looks like the bottom of someone’s mouth. I like to lie on it. A giant flat television sits encased in the room’s dividing wall. Undulating lines of pink cross the floor, and go up the curtains. The bathroom is encased in glass. I feel like I am being dressed by someone who knows a lot about certain types of clothes. It is nice to be made to feel this way.
I sit down on my bed to read up on Karim’s design. It is, says the hotel’s brochure, ‘music for the eyes...a sojourn into a new dimension...’ I’m not sure what this means. Then it says, ‘words...cannot do justice to something that needs to be experienced first-hand – because great design begins at the point where language has reached its limit.’ I put down the brochure. I have reached the limits of hunger. And time is speeding up. I mustn’t be late - I am due to tour the hotel at 9 sharp. I reconnect with my brain’s residual pools of Daiquiri and take a quick shower. I hum and whistle as I dress.
In the lift, I am still humming. I am imagining breakfast. I wonder what music will be played as I eat. I would like some more of the techno. Then I look up and see a colour saturated photograph of Karim. He is in a giant light box. He is on the whole of the ceiling. He stares down at me. He is wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of glasses, and he hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. A woman – a beautiful woman – with half-closed eyes looks up at him. Her mouth is open. She looks like she is going to take a bite out of his cheek. Karim’s mouth is also slightly open. He is looking directly at me. Why is Karim looking at me like that? He is making me feel light headed. I am losing the ability to think. Stop it, Karim.
I enter the breakfast room by way of the lobby, scene of last night’s scene. One final kick from the Daiquiri and I find myself at the foot of a pink plastic lectern. I think I hear music playing. A waiter greets me with a smile. ‘Room number, sir?’ Room number? What is he talking about? I look behind him, into the room. Two huge pink plastic semi-circular breakfast units split the room. Super-white plates lie in piles beneath shelves full of neat little packages of food. Cutlery glints in the winter sun. On either side, white tables – as white as Karim’s t-shirt – line up in perfect inorganic rows. Light pours in from the river.
This morning breakfast is a range of cereals, international right through to locally sourced oats; it is all kinds of bread, and muffins; it is all kinds of eggs - old school, new school, your way; it is smoked salmon in lemon and dill, sausage, cold meats, paper-thin side-plates of prosciutto crudo; it is coffee, tea, juice. I go for the coffee, and a bowl of muesli. I sit down with my group. I see that they’ve had the lot, and toast and butter and small pots of jam compote. I eat my muesli. It is chewy and sweet, and filled with nuts and seeds. I think there’s some coconut in it too. I drink the coffee. It is bitter, and tastes very good indeed. I wonder what it is.
My group leaves. I stare out at the river, which is beginning to look pink. I feel like Karim is right here, next to me, enjoying a quick mint tea, eggs Benedict, French toast and maple syrup. I can’t speak. I am beyond humming. I am completely elevating.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Gail's, Clerkenwell
Gail's
33-35 Exmouth Market
Clerkenwell
EC1R 4QL
0207 713 6550
www.gailsbread.co.uk
by Blake Pudding
After more than a year without full time work, I finally have a new job. This is not cause for delight. The under employed life suited me and I had never been happier. Sadly Mrs. Pudding’s costly renovation plans for our London home have forced me back into the rat race. There are consolations, however, in my new employment: I have my own office with a sliding door, minions on call, and best of all, a company credit card.
I decided to celebrate with a slap-up breakfast. I invited along the literary editor of the Observer, Will Skidelsky, who is a keen gourmand (I’m not using this as euphemism for a fat). We met at the latest branch of swanky bakery Gail’s, on Exmouth Market.
First a little gripe about Americanisms on the menu. No one likes Americans and America more than me but we are in England so there is not need to call a muffin an English muffin. In a similar vein why can’t they use our delightful descriptive term eggy bread rather than French toast? Gripe over; for breakfast the proof is in the pudding and no breakfast could be more pudding-like than Mr Skidelsky’s: eggy bread with zabaglione and roasted quince. The bread was crisp and lightly caramelised and the zabaglione functioned, according to William, like a sweet Hollandaise. Delicious but much too sweet for my morning palate.
I ordered baked eggs on a muffin, bacon, and roast tomatoes with cottage cheese. Cottage cheese! Normally I would have asked them to leave it off but I reasoned that taking into account Gail’s reputation and the high price of my breakfast, £8.50, this would be the best cottage cheese in the world. Maybe it was but it tasted just like cottage cheese i.e. horrible but with chives. Sadly it wasn’t the worst component of my meal. That honour went to the muffin which was stale, stodgy and had not been toasted. My baked eggs looked a lot like fried eggs and were overcooked despite specifying them runny. The bacon was tasty but brittle and ungenerously proportioned.
Did I mention that it cost £8.50? What a cynical take on the English breakfast this was. If my new employers hadn’t been picking up the tab, I would have been furious.
33-35 Exmouth Market
Clerkenwell
EC1R 4QL
0207 713 6550
www.gailsbread.co.uk
by Blake Pudding
After more than a year without full time work, I finally have a new job. This is not cause for delight. The under employed life suited me and I had never been happier. Sadly Mrs. Pudding’s costly renovation plans for our London home have forced me back into the rat race. There are consolations, however, in my new employment: I have my own office with a sliding door, minions on call, and best of all, a company credit card.
I decided to celebrate with a slap-up breakfast. I invited along the literary editor of the Observer, Will Skidelsky, who is a keen gourmand (I’m not using this as euphemism for a fat). We met at the latest branch of swanky bakery Gail’s, on Exmouth Market.
First a little gripe about Americanisms on the menu. No one likes Americans and America more than me but we are in England so there is not need to call a muffin an English muffin. In a similar vein why can’t they use our delightful descriptive term eggy bread rather than French toast? Gripe over; for breakfast the proof is in the pudding and no breakfast could be more pudding-like than Mr Skidelsky’s: eggy bread with zabaglione and roasted quince. The bread was crisp and lightly caramelised and the zabaglione functioned, according to William, like a sweet Hollandaise. Delicious but much too sweet for my morning palate.
I ordered baked eggs on a muffin, bacon, and roast tomatoes with cottage cheese. Cottage cheese! Normally I would have asked them to leave it off but I reasoned that taking into account Gail’s reputation and the high price of my breakfast, £8.50, this would be the best cottage cheese in the world. Maybe it was but it tasted just like cottage cheese i.e. horrible but with chives. Sadly it wasn’t the worst component of my meal. That honour went to the muffin which was stale, stodgy and had not been toasted. My baked eggs looked a lot like fried eggs and were overcooked despite specifying them runny. The bacon was tasty but brittle and ungenerously proportioned.
Did I mention that it cost £8.50? What a cynical take on the English breakfast this was. If my new employers hadn’t been picking up the tab, I would have been furious.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Special Dispatch: Kahana Sands, Kahana, Maui
Kahana Sands Restaurant
Sands of Kahana
4299 Lower Honoapiilani Hwy
Kahana, HI, 96761
by Malcolm Eggs
"Speed limit enforced by laser." (Traffic sign, near Kahana)
Sands of Kahana: a four-star hotel full of fake plants, glittering sea views and people reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm sat in the poolside diner, waiting to order breakfast.
Our waiter is in long baggy shorts. He makes a decent attempt at toothy American cheer but there's something else, a fragility behind the eyes. It's like he's one dark thought away from smashing the shit out of a fish tank with the putting wedge he keeps behind the counter in case of visitors from the past.
I'm here to sample loco moco, a Hawaiian traditional breakfast of rice topped with a burger, two fried eggs and onion gravy. It sounds plain terrifying and the name means 'crazy snot', but it's traditional so there absolutely has to be something good about it. Our waiter is delighted.
When he delivers my plate, he says, "don't be intimidated by the way it looks". Which is a fair comment: this gleaming white and brown heap is not Miss Hawaii material. I dig in. The burger is dry, thin and chewy. The gravy is the clingy kind we used to fear more than even nuclear winter back in the school dinner halls of 80s Birmingham. Competent rice and eggs are slaughtered in the crossfire.
I'm ashamed to say I make myself eat enough to avoid awkwardness, and then sit scowling at a distant palm tree. Our waiter picks it up without a word and walks off. Such a beautiful place; such an unbeautiful breakfast. London seems so far away.
Sands of Kahana
4299 Lower Honoapiilani Hwy
Kahana, HI, 96761
by Malcolm Eggs
"Speed limit enforced by laser." (Traffic sign, near Kahana)
Sands of Kahana: a four-star hotel full of fake plants, glittering sea views and people reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm sat in the poolside diner, waiting to order breakfast.
Our waiter is in long baggy shorts. He makes a decent attempt at toothy American cheer but there's something else, a fragility behind the eyes. It's like he's one dark thought away from smashing the shit out of a fish tank with the putting wedge he keeps behind the counter in case of visitors from the past.
I'm here to sample loco moco, a Hawaiian traditional breakfast of rice topped with a burger, two fried eggs and onion gravy. It sounds plain terrifying and the name means 'crazy snot', but it's traditional so there absolutely has to be something good about it. Our waiter is delighted.
When he delivers my plate, he says, "don't be intimidated by the way it looks". Which is a fair comment: this gleaming white and brown heap is not Miss Hawaii material. I dig in. The burger is dry, thin and chewy. The gravy is the clingy kind we used to fear more than even nuclear winter back in the school dinner halls of 80s Birmingham. Competent rice and eggs are slaughtered in the crossfire.
I'm ashamed to say I make myself eat enough to avoid awkwardness, and then sit scowling at a distant palm tree. Our waiter picks it up without a word and walks off. Such a beautiful place; such an unbeautiful breakfast. London seems so far away.
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