Cereal Killer Cafe, Shoreditch

Cereal Killer Cafe
139 Brick Lane
Shoreditch
E1 6SB
07590 436 055
www.cerealkillercafe.co.uk

by Haulin' Oats

I'm stood on Brick Lane, East London. It's 6.45 on a Wednesday morning. It's 2014. And I'm lost in thought.

Was it always like this? There was always posturing. Style everything, substance just for abuse. But wasn't there also creativity, spirit - original, fresh energy? Something more than the mechanical application of formulas for being and doing?

I notice that everyone else has gone in. It's opened. I walk in the door and a thousand fizzing characters, human, animal and indeterminate, gleefully enthusing me to imbibe sugar from their box-source stare down at me. I walk past two girls with undercuts planning yoga, festivals and polo for next summer, and then I see them. The twins. Grey hair, beards, sparky eyes and grins. They're discussing childhood TV.

'But you know The Magic Roundabout was all about drugs?'

'Ah it was GENIUS. They had to be on so many drugs to write amazing stuff like that...'

They notice me.

'Ah! You're the reviewer?!' says one. I nod.

'The reviewer!!' they exclaim in unison, 'we hope you like our cereals'.

'Well I've tried a lot of them already,' I reply. 'You'll answer my questions?'

'Questions? We've been known to answer questions,' says one.

'By all means!' cries the other. 'I'm a veritable question answering expert! I used to play Bamboozle on Teletext every day. Do you remember Bamber Boozler? What a genius! I love Bamber Boozler!'

'Yeah, he was a geeeenius,' says the other.

'What's your favourite cereal?' I ask.

'Marshmallow flavoured Rice Krispies.'

'Vanilla Chex - with strawberry milk! Strawberries and creeeeeeeeeam! Mmmmmmmmm!!!'

'Which celebs, other than Nathan Barley, do you think will come to your cafe?'

'Oh we think lots! All of them!' Pronounces one.

'Ones even more famous than Nathan Butler,' says the other.

A wave of nausea suddenly hits me. I'm staring at my notes and the room feels like it's breathing. Then the rest just pours out.

'Is your cafe ironic? Do you really like ADHD kids' food? Or just jokingly like it? Is there really anything to celebrate here beyond a profound efficiency in the delivery of deadly consumption habit forming food to minors? Or is that the point? Is this an indictment by celebration and submission? Hence Cereal 'Killer' Cafe?'

The one that played Bamboozle every day is perfectly still, looking at me with thunderous eyes. His beard is prickling, rising on end. The other is wiping his hands down his face, turned slightly away, skittering between a high pitched titter and a sort of wet, bubbly whimper.

A pause, a no-man's land. All meaning, the great cultural edifice of our psyches melts away.

His fist flies, I duck, but at the same time plant my hands on the the counter and roll across it, smashing into them amid wet grenades of cereal inspired cake. Bamboozle tries to pull the till down on my head but I'm rolling away. Springing up I head butt him in the neck, sending him flying into the wall of cereals. I spin around bringing up my elbow as I do and sharply crack his twin in the temple. He melts unnaturally into the mass of cereal. Three twitches and still. Bamboozle is charging at me swinging a Tony the Tiger skateboard that he's ripped from the wall. But I'm ready and I plough forward taking the blow in my midriff, my weight crashing onto him and he falls backwards. We land with me straddling him. I've got one hand on his neck, squeezing, the other grabbing handfuls from the multicoloured sea of cereal surrounding us, stuffing it in his mouth.

'It's more than a fucking crap ironic joke. You are the fear and the meaninglessness and submission to The Man, you are his insidious veil of baubles. You are the destruction of truth and beauty. You are the sick infantilisation of our culture. You are adult humans running around in fucking Teletubby costumes slathered in wacky goo goo baby sentimentality. You are the irony stitched Buffalo Bill cloak of kiddy culture skins, masking reality, obscuring the cage we're in. Your cafe is seventh tenths horrifying, and two tenths a really good idea I wish I'd had, and one tenth... one tenth...'

Bamboozle is still.

There's a lot of cereal in his beard.

As I rise up the two girls have overcome their shock and start running for the door. 'Mummy's - Sloane Square,' one shouts. I walk across the Cereal Killer Cafe covered in Lucky Charms, Chocohoops and blood. I step out onto Brick Lane, East London.



I start. I'm stood on Brick Lane. It's 7.15 on a Wednesday morning. It's 2014. I've been lost in thought. Deeply daydreaming.

I walk in to the Cereal Killer Cafe, a place that serves a huge selection of breakfast cereals - over 60 from all around the world. It's £2.50 for a small bowl and £3.20 for a large, with milk on the side included. They have thirty different types of milk. And they have toppings too, such as Mini Oreos, at 20p extra. This all translates into the neat concept of cereal cocktail creations, for example:

Double Rainbow: Trix, Fruity Pebbles and freeze dried marshmallows served with strawberry milk.

Bowloccino: Nesquick and Cocoa Pebbles served with espresso milk and a flake.

Chocopotomus: Coco pops and Krave served with chocolate milk and a Kinder Happy Hippo.

The Cereal Killer Cafe has most definitely captured folks' imagination, kicking up a good old multi-flavoured stir. Buzzfeed love it and have done a list or two on it, Vice have assessed its pop cultural significance and compared visiting it on DMT to visiting it on aspirin (probably), Time Out like it but also allow that you can hate it - because that's cool too. The owners have received marriage proposals and death threats and there's been a mighty furore about one of them cutting an interview short after being asked whether charging £3.20 for a bowl of cereal can be justified in one of the poorest boroughs in the UK, an interview question so preposterous that you'd be horrified to witness it in some kind of deranged daydream, never mind from Channel 4 in so called reality.

I walk past a Tony the Tiger skateboard on the wall and a portrait of TV cereal killer Dexter constructed out of various shades of toasted Cheerios. I'm in a theme cafe. It's like something you'd find in Japan. Or Shoreditch.

I decide to go for the Bowloccino. I enjoy the first two spoonfuls. A lot. But the sugar overwhelms me. It's sickly and samey, a two dimensional dish. Maybe in just the right situation and mood I'd relish the whole bowl, and this maybe would have occurred much more frequently when I was a younger man.

Cereal is a food almost entirely created by entrepreneurs and marketeers, which is why being able to see all the design and paraphernalia is an important part of the visit. A mini, niche, museum-cafe, a fun experience and a fine addition to the hipster theme park that surrounds it (which, as we wind our way towards Spike Jonze's vision of the not so far future presented in Her, may extend indefinitely).

However, as for eating there...Well, if you like a lot of sugar, delivered with blunt happy flavours, or you're in that kind of mood, then, grrrrreat. But on the whole I'd say it's just like with kids' TV shows: you should never go back. You remember them as magical, but try watching them now and you discover that they're mostly terrible. Their poverty was swept away by the transformational imaginative energy of youth. And, unfortunately, I just don't have the energy for fruity pebbles with marshmallows and strawberry milk any more.

The bearded twins seem like nice guys. They wave me goodbye with warm smiles. I pause for a quick final look at the Tony the Tiger skateboard on the wall and step out onto Brick Lane, East London.

A history of Soho in five cafes

by Malcolm Eggs

Amid all the talk of Soho's slow drift into becoming just another homogenised part of central London, here's a piece I wrote in 2012 for Esquire magazine.

Maison Bertaux (est. 1871)

This salon du thé was founded by refugees escaping the bloody aftermath of the Paris Commune and now stands as the most enchanting remnant of a time when Soho was also the ‘French quarter’. Amazingly, the business has only changed hands twice in the last 140 years. The current owner, Michelle, started working here as a ‘Saturday girl’ in 1971. Her establishment deploys replica roses, French café music, pink netting and paperback novels to create an atmosphere that makes you want to get into handwritten correspondences with women of unclear motives. Breakfast is coffee with buttery croissants and pastries made, as they have been since forever, fresh on the premises.

The Star Cafe (est.1934)

The ‘Star Special’, served all day, is two eggs, bacon, sausage and tomatoes. It comes with a round of hot buttered toast and is delicious, especially the eggs, which have been basted in hot oil so as to slightly seal the yolks. This dish hasn’t changed much since the cafe was founded, although the owner Mario notes that the menu has gradually lost the likes of bread and dripping, to be replaced with things like eggs Florentine. His father, Pop, bought the business for £320, at a time when the building also hosted the mysterious Baudha Manoli Yaghurt Company.
Note: Mario Forte sadly passed away in the spring of 2014 and The Star is now run by his daughter Julia.

Bar Italia (est. 1949)

At breakfast-time Bar Italia is authentically Italian or in other words completely indifferent to the idea of eating. If you must have food, there are a few pastries on the bar, but the main event is coffee, preferably espresso, flowing from a clanking Gaggia machine and then drunk either perched inside on a high stool, or around one of the crowded stainless steel tables on the street outside. The onetime subject of a Pulp song, Bar Italia has a large plasma TV for sporting events: fitting given that this is the building from which John Logie Baird transmitted the world’s first recognisable television images.

Bar Bruno (est. 1978)

In a strip of shops containing Pret a Manger, Carphone Warehouse and a brash arcade called Las Vegas, Bar Bruno is a comforting sight – one of those classic London hybrids of trattoria, sandwich bar and greasy spoon. The original Bruno sold up just over a decade ago, and the site of his cafe began its life as a food establishment in around 1960 when an entrepreneurial couple found they could do a roaring trade selling tea, coffee and biscuits from a small space next to where you’ll now find the crisp rack. Today, good, hearty, greasy breakfasts and strong cups of tea are dished out to an endless stream of regulars.

Balans Café (est 1987) and Balans (est 1993)

There are a lot of chain restaurants in Soho, but the key difference with Balans is that it started here. Founded when the Soho clubbing scene was at its peak, Balans was designed to fit in with the resulting clock-indifferent lifestyles. Among other things (‘chill-out room chic’ furniture and soundtrack) this meant serving breakfast in the middle of the night, after the clubs shut but before the first train home. If you want excellent cinnamon French toast or a breakfast burrito at 3am, this is still where you come.

Old Coffee Pot, New Orleans, USA

Old Coffee Pot

714 Rue St. Peter

New Orleans

Louisiana

+1 504 524 3500

www.theoldcoffeepot.com

by Louie Slinger

Given the New Orleans habit of carousing, it's no surprise to anyone, I guess, that there's a tradition of great breakfasts that are served until sometime in the afternoon. The Old Coffee Pot, right in the middle of the French Quarter, has been feeding folks, both hungover and otherwise, since 1894. A nice old townhouse with both inside dining and tables on its patio and covered driveway, it draws locals as well as tourists. It was a local who took me there the first time, in fact.

The menu offered lots of New Orleans specialties. Louisiana is rice country: calas, rice cakes rather like rissoles that were once sold from baskets by street criers, show up, paired with syrup. They're dense with a crunchy outside, just the thing to absorb any alcohol lingering in one's gut.

New Orleans likes to play with the eggs Benedict formula. There were four variations here, including eggs Sardou, which poses creamed spinach and an artichoke heart under the eggs instead of ham, and eggs Conti, which begins with a tender split American biscuit, piles on sauteed chicken livers and spring onions all in a winy sauce laced with a suspicion of garlic. Rich? Well, just. On this trip I succumbed to the Rockefeller omelette, which was full of oysters, creamed spinach and cheese, and probably packed enough flavor to raise some of the bodies buried behind St. Louis Cathedral, over a the next block.

Ladies who've worked there for years kept things humming, as they always do. In early December, late one quiet morning, five customers held hands and said grace before beginning their meal. (Not all visitors are sinners; occasionally there are church conventions in town.) When their meal was finished, they paid their check and the waitress wished them a merry Christmas, and added, "Remember, Jesus is the reason for the season." And then she planted her feet, squared her shoulders and let fly with a spontaneous, stunning gospel rendition of 'Silent Night'.

Never forget - this is a city where anything can happen. 

Mani's, Hampstead

Mani’s

12 Perrins Court

Hampstead

NW3 1QS

020 7435 0777

by John LeCafe

Mani’s had been somewhat of a tradition for me a few years ago. I worked in an office close by where meat was banned by the vegan boss. Pork Fridays, as I and a colleague termed them, were our way of protesting against this.

On the morning I returned, the weather was beautiful. It was one of those clear, crisp, cloudless days that seemingly only autumn can produce. As the cafe is set down a lovely cobbled street with no passing cars, I decided to sit outside. It had provided blankets on the backs of the chairs, but given both the weather and the speed with which I had walked up the hill, these proved unnecessary.

They had two kinds of fry-up. One was a bit pricey and the other even pricier. Tea was not included either. Still, this was Hampstead. When the waitress came, I surprised myself by going for the expensive option and surprised myself even more by going for wholemeal bread. I must have been swayed by the location and ambience.

The staff were friendly, polite and incredibly quick. They offered me choices about everything that seemed pertinent (sauce, bread and type of tea) and smiled warmly whenever they passed. The tea arrived within moments, toast shortly after and the rest of the breakfast was not far behind. The toast was made from thick and hearty bread, and the breakfast featured a higher class of sausage and perfectly cooked eggs. But something seemed to be lacking.

I was struggling to put my finger on it. Here was a trip down memory lane on a glorious autumnal day and an excellent breakfast, but soon I realised it was the other customers who were affecting my experience.

One couple a few tables down from me were sat quietly enjoying coffee while at their feet a small dog scuttled about. The dog had a pink jacket and a hairstyle which is normally popular with young girls and, I believe, is called a pineapple. However, this was simply amusing and not affecting my meal.

It was the estate agents sat a few tables in the other direction who were coming close to ruining it. They spoke loudly and boringly to each other of million pound deals and commission cheques. Often they took calls from clients who they would talk to as if interested while indicating to their colleague what a bore they were: smiling, laughing and joking on the phone as they made derogatory hand signs to their dining companion. Finally, once their phones had stopped and their talk of money ceased, they moved on to discuss shooting in unnecessary detail or to just staring at any woman who walked past.

This is a wonderful café with fantastic staff and a top-notch fry up, but I will take a closer look at who else is there before sitting down next time.

Hog Island, San Francisco, USA

Hog Island

Ferry Building Marketplace

One Ferry Building

San Francisco, CA 94111

+1 (415) 983 8000

www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com

by Des Ayuno

The last time I saw H, it was also over breakfast – ten years earlier, at a smart café on Melrose in West Hollywood. I think we both thought it safest, it being too civilised for coffee or knives to be flung. I’m pretty sure he had eggs Benedict, while, trying to distance myself from him, from our heretofore near-perfect culinary harmony, I ordered something sweet, probably French toast. It was uncharacteristic. I am not, as I’m sure he would agree, a “sweet” person. I didn’t even have the option of delightful crispy bacon to soak up the maple syrup – I didn’t eat meat, then. But, well, he didn’t eat cock, then. We’re different people now.

When I arrived, San Francisco was suffering an uncharacteristic heat wave. Already fuming at the early-morning start and at my own weakness in thinking this was a good idea, I clambered up hill after hill, the bright-green Prada heels I’d been determined to wear slipping across the sidewalks, and arrived dripping with sweat at H’s aggressively trendy ad-agency workplace. Reception was at the top of two flights of marble stairs and as I tried to catch my breath, I reflected on the grotesqueness of its gold-patterned wallpaper. Then I realised it was shelves upon shelves of glassed-in Clios and Roses and those chunks of gilded tin they hand out at Montreux, stretching into the distance. 

After fifteen minutes or so, he bounded down the big central staircase, unapologetic and skinny and glowing as ever. We dawdled down to the waterside as he rambled with mock chagrin about all the trips to Delhi and Dubai he’d had to make recently; the time-sapping TV pilot he was developing; the expensively decorated, lonely city-centre apartment; the much older boyfriend, whose ex-wife and children dared to stake a claim on his time and substantial bank account. We stopped at a chic oyster bar where the waitresses all knew his name and, ever the gentleman, he guided me solicitously to the seat with the most picture-postcard-perfect view of the Bay Bridge, with hands that had always felt like soft, nimble brown paws. 

Americans have funny ideas about what constitutes brunch. Or maybe it was normal for ad men, or for borderline-eating-disordered gays in San Francisco. H ordered a massive platter of oysters (“All Pacific, obviously,” he reminded the waitress with a wink) and a crispy, gooey, three-farmers-market-cheeses-on-grilled-artisan-sourdough sandwich that he suggested we split but only watched me eat with hungry, shining eyes. 

Afterwards, I sat down in front of the Ferry to watch the pigeons. They were bigger than London’s nervy, ragged birds, glossy and sedate. I wanted to tell H that they chose marriage and kids and got fat and stupid. I wanted to ask if he remembered the icy winter night a few months after we met, when we argued, even worse than usual – him screaming, me sobbing, somebody coming down from upstairs to scream at both of us to shut up. He had stopped instantly. Then he had poured two shots of whiskey, looked at them for a long minute, and flung them out the window into the snow. He had taken my hand in the newly echoing silence and pulled me into a wordless, graceful waltz until I slumped into him, exhausted. 

My phone rang. I ignored it for a minute, then reached inside my bag. Next to the phone was a small package. Under the brown-paper wrapping and narrow red ribbon was a crinkly bag of very expensive jasmine-flower tea, and another of dried orange slices, which I’d bought in Beijing two years earlier, seeing them next to each other on a supermarket shelf like glowing talismans and suddenly panicking that I hadn’t seen H in eight years and might never see him again. We’d listened to Leonard Cohen nonstop in those first few months, although that day on the waterfront I was thinking less of “Suzanne” than of another song, the one I still can’t bear to hear, with its extraordinary, searing selfishness. “If I have been unkind,” he croons, “I hope that you can just let it go by.” I guess we’ve both tried in our way to be free.

Smiths, St Leonards-on-Sea

Smiths
21 Grand Parade

St Leonards-on-Sea
East Sussex

TN37 6DN

by Nelson Griddle

To St Leonards for the weekend, where my sister has recently bought a one-bedroom flat there for a sum of money that would only get you a shoebox in London,  and a pretty poky shoebox at that.

Late autumn sunlight shimmers on the sea, the shingle is endlessly entertaining to my one-year-old son, and not very much seems to happen on the streets lined with faded, slightly wedding-cakey Victorian stucco houses.

In total, it feels a bit like Brighton in the early Nineties, kept from more rapid development by the slow train – and even slower A21 – to London.

But we’re not here for the travel details, I hear you cry. What are the breakfasts like?

We go to Smiths on the sea front (their strapline is “Real Food”) to find out, and taste a truly excellent full English. My New Year’s resolution a couple of years ago was to eat more quality pork products – something which, like most of my NYRs, I have failed to achieve. However, this sojourn to sunny St L’s helps me to make up for lost time.

The Cumberland sausages are superb. Ditto the bacon and black pudding.  The baby tomatoes, moreover, are bursting with flavour, and the poached eggs (territory on which your average short-order cook often slips up) are top notch.

Which only leaves the service. They are friendly enough, these St Leonards folk, but I have to articulate a gripe when it comes to our waiter’s shirt. On this particular Sunday morning he was sporting a pale blue Ralph Lauren number. Difficult enough to take exception to, you might think, were it not for the fact that the back of this garment was soaking – literally soaking - in sweat. I’ve no doubt waitering is hot work, but at what point does waiterly perspiration put your punters off their grub?

This is a question for Smiths to ponder. Along with the issue of what on earth “real food” means. The opposite of ontologically non-existent food, perhaps? Or existentially inauthentic food? I suspect the issue of sweaty shirts will prove less philosophically abstruse.

Café Bon, West Hampstead

Café Bon
94 West End Lane
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2LU
020 7624 7548

by John le Café

West Hampstead is not blessed with a lot of good breakfast options. There is only one proper caff but it is sub-standard, and there are posh cafés, but on a Sunday, with a hangover, I didn’t want to spend £9 on something involving sourdough bread.

When I neared Café Bon I saw a sign outside which advertised it as a ‘Caffee’. Now, I have often considered the differences between a caff and a café but a ‘Caffee’ was a new one on me.

Inside I found out that it was a hybrid: part caff and part café. They had a full range of healthier sandwiches and salads but still offered a full English for £4.50. A few of the tables were busy with people talking or reading the newspapers. I was encouraged.

I ordered from the slightly surly owner and waited. I began to worry when my tea did not come. I waited and eventually it did arrive but not on its own. It came with the rest of the breakfast. Upon tasting it seemed that the tea bag had been left in the whole time the breakfast was cooking. It was thick, bitter and also too hot to enjoy with the food. Not a great start.

There were, however, some positives. The sausages were good – the expensive end of cheap caff sausages. Probably full of sawdust and cheap cuts but undoubtedly the best type of sausage for a Sunday morning. There was also enough toast. Four slices of wonderfully cheap, thick, white bread. And loads of beans.

That’s where the positives end. The toast, though plentiful was in the wrong place. It was all under the beans. This meant it was impossible to enjoy a piece of toast which wasn’t slathered in tomato sauce. Now I, like most people I presume, enjoy beans on toast but I also wanted other things with my toast.

The mushrooms were greasy and tasteless and I only had two sad-looking slivers of a grilled tomato. The fried egg was hard in the middle and there wasn’t any brown sauce. I may repeat that to emphasise the point. There was no brown sauce in the entire place.

Then we have to discuss the bacon. Surely, the most important element of the breakfast and one that if done well, could have lifted the rest of the disappointing meal. But this wasn’t real bacon. It was imitation bacon. It had no fat, no flavour and a strange, almost burgundy, colour. I feel calling it bacon is a grand exaggeration.

I waited for the owner to finish the loud argument he was having over the phone and paid. One to avoid. Next weekend I will begin my search again.

Café 1001, Spitalfields

Café 1001

91 Brick Lane

Spitalfields

E1 6QL (on corner of Dray Walk)

by Marge E. Reen

Breakfast ordered: Full English

Cost: £6

Time: 9 am Sunday morning.

Weather conditions: Hot and humid.

Location: Bench in alley off Brick Lane leading towards Rough Trade East. In the evenings Café 1001 is always heaving with drunk people eating burgers and fried chicken from the outdoor grill but at this hour it was sleepily quiet, too early for the hipster hordes to have surfaced. 

Service: Charmless. 

Forensic analysis

Exhibit A (sausage): Looked like a pallid penis in a ripped condom. Barely browned, microwaved, dubious pink colour. When I complained the manager insisted it was ‘a very nice Cumberland sausage’ despite all visual and gustatory evidence to the contrary.

Exhibit B (eggs):  Bone dry, leathery and not scrambled, which was what I had asked for, although the waitress/cook insisted I hadn’t.

Exhibit C (tomato): Hard, unforgiving and had only glimpsed a frying pan.

Exhibit D (coffee): Piss-weak.

Exhibit E (beans): The sauce had a mealy, furry quality, which suggested this item had been cooked a while before and reheated, possibly several times. 

Exhibit F (bacon): Overcooked but passable. About the only thing they didn’t manage to entirely screw up apart from...

Exhibit G (mushrooms): Decent, but could not compensate for the fact that my stomach had been utterly turned by Exhibits A and B.

Exhibit H (white toast): I sent my breakfast back before I got a chance to taste this but I don’t imagine this café is capable of toasting bread properly.

Verdict: Guilty of serving badly-cooked, borderline inedible food. After a brief (and relatively restrained) confrontation with the manager I got a refund. I hope my case for the prosecution has persuaded you not to go to this café. One of the worst breakfasts I have ever attempted to eat. I did consider forcing myself to finish it as I was hungry but I feared I would get food poisoning from the sausage, or something worse. 

Wetherspoons, Leeds

Wetherspoons
North Concourse
Leeds City Station
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4DT
0113 247 1676
www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/pubs/wetherspoons-leeds

by Michel Houellebrecq

What, or maybe more precisely who, in the name of God is a ‘Wetherspoon’? Sure, the website blathers on with some cheerily happy-clappy explanation, but I’m not convinced. If he (sorry) is a bloke, rather than a piece of undecidable cutlery, then I’d like to imagine he’s a pretty decent, salt-of-the-earth kind of (Northern) bloke, fresh back from a day’s honest graft to get in a couple o’t’ales for t’lads. It’s more likely, however, that he’s currently reclining on an inflatable lilo, sipping umbrella’d Pina Coladas as a fleet of nymphets (sorry, again) pamper his tootsies and buff his W-monogrammed belt-buckle.

Whoever he is, if the Leeds examples of his offerings are anything to go by, he’s onto a winner and his brand has turned things around, casting off images of sticky-carpeted hovels filled exclusively with the disturbed, the aggressive and the lonely. I was on a fleeting visit to Yorkshire and, whereas five years ago I would’ve pretended I’d gone to the infinitely classier (or slightly less shameful) All-Bar-One instead, I’m proud to publicly state that the only licensed hospitality I received during my time in the UK’s third-biggest city was from J.D. Wetherspoon Esq. Yes, you heard correctly.

I’d been impressed by the Thursday nite vibe of the Beckett’s Bank Branch. We’d wandered in there half by mistake: we were tired and hotelling in the vicinity, your Honour. I had to do a double take. This wasn’t the Wetherspoons of old. Where were the broken chairs? The shattered glass? The muscly dogs? The eight-man brawls? They’d been replaced by families, cross-cultural groups drinking coffee and having intelligent-looking debates, craft beer, real ales and fancy ciders. No-one was being beaten up, especially not me. We were so impressed, in fact, that we made a date for an early breakfast the following morning at the Station branch (this one didn’t open early enough); the newly-launched menu looked promising.

I wouldn’t normally dream of eating, or drinking (or maybe even breathing) in most British train stations, but if you put the depressing thought of the guy on the fruit machines gambling hard at 7.30am on a Friday out of mind, it was a joy. Cheap, decent, tasty, well-cooked, I might even dare ‘hearty’ fodder: what’s not to like? £4.60 for a ginormous ‘large’ cooked breakfast, £3.90 for a much more sensible ‘traditional’ version of the same. Everything you’d want was present and correct; sausages had substance, toast had poppy seeds (POPPY SEEDS!) and it was just the right side of greasy. Yeah, so the mushrooms might’ve been slightly on the soggy side, and they insisted on giving us each half a grilled tomato (who the hell actually eats them?), but I’m splitting hairs. They even have a selection of porridge and fresh fruit with ‘Greek-style’ honey. All the calories are clearly displayed for the post-5/2 generation. Coffee was good (hot, strong) and you get free refills until deep in the afternoon. Under £11 for breakfast for two. It’s a bleedin’ public service. Criticising this would be like slagging off a sunny day, although, rest assured, I’ve been known to do that. Whether Herr Wetherspoon is an honest sod, or a smily spiv, it matters not. His gaff is worth a (re)visit.

ChwarChra Hotel, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

ChwarChra Hotel
Sheikh Abdulsalam Barzani Street
Erbil
+964 66 2231508
www.chwarchrahotel.com

by Thom Yolke

Unless you happen to live in a cave with a dodgy router, it’s more or less impossible to avoid the torrent of unsettling news coming from Iraq at present. The black flags of the Islamic State have unfurled across the country, plunging the whole region into ever greater uncertainty. And yet, it was only in May of this year, just before ISIS (as they were then known) began literally bulldozing the borders, that I found myself having breakfast in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdish territory, was, until recently, a relatively safe and even prosperous place, due largely to the steady flow of oil money that has seen shiny new hotels continue to sprout up on an almost weekly basis. These hotels, I quickly discovered, cater largely to those who want to preserve a semblance of Western continuity. Their lobbies chime with muzak versions of British or American power ballads, and their menus offer Western staples to reassure the far-from-home oil men. I would be staying in a different sort of hotel altogether.

My hotel had the look of a place that had witnessed another era, and survived it. A whitish, boxy building which had begun to flake at the edges, the entrance was adorned with a flickering neon sign, and lined with an eclectic menagerie of taxidermy. Beady eyed goats and lion cubs appeared locked into eternal staring contests. There was a distinctly bohemian atmosphere among the labyrinth of sofas that lined the lobby, as though you could expect to hear two local poets having a heated argument about form while becoming increasingly enveloped in a cloud of shish-a smoke.

On my first morning, I ventured over to the buffet and at first was underwhelmed, but on reflection I realised that’s because I didn’t really know what I was looking at. Some of the options looked familiar enough, sliced pineapple and dates, yoghurt and honey. It was only when I was encouraged with a gesture from the waiter to try a thick creamy substance that I initially passed over, that my eyes were opened. The waiter, not speaking English, nodded that I should combine it with a fine, dark looking jam which I noticed had a golden iridescence to it as I spooned a generous splodge over the fluffy cream. The waiter signalled his approval with a thumbs up and a wink as I sat down. The first mouthful confirmed that it was fresh fig jam, a Biblical fruit rendered into sin. The strong flavour of the jam was complemented by the cleansing neutrality of the cream, which after further enquiries I discovered to be buffalo curd, also popular in neighbouring Iran and Turkey. Less rubbery than its cousin mozzarella it possesses a paradoxical lightness of flavour with a decadently whipped texture. It occurred to me that this combination was probably an ancient delicacy, enjoyed by the Sumerians or Babylonians who could afford such delights. Being a novice and aware that there were no set limits on quantities at the buffet, I may have slightly overdone the portions. Four helpings later, like any hedonistic Babylonian, I could barely move from my chair, and the sympathetic nodding of the waiter as he collected my bowl told me he was no stranger to this sensation either.

It took me most of the day to recover from the overwhelming richness of the dish, but it didn’t stop me going back for a single helping the following morning, or the next.

Riverside Cafe, Clapton

Riverside Cafe

Riverside Cottage

Spring Hill

near Springfield Marina and Lea Rowing Club

Clapton

E5 9BL

020 8806 4448

by Marge E. Reen

‘Lisa and Stacy welcome you,’ said the sign outside, but we didn’t feel very welcome when we went in and the two girls on the counter ignored us for five minutes before one sulkily asked what we’d like.

‘A breakfast,’ said Mr Reen.

‘Breakfasts finish at 12 o’clock. It says it on the sign.’

This must have been on the other side of the sign.

‘I’ll have a ham and cheese omelette,’ I said, which is as near to breakfast as you can get. 

‘I’ll just have a white Americano,’ said Mr Reen. ‘I’m not giving them any more of my money if I can’t have a breakfast,’ he muttered as we made our way outside to find a seat.

Despite the blazing morning and the abundance of potential outdoor seating space overlooking the river, there were only about four benches so we had to share one with a father and his young daughter, who had been waiting for their food for a while and feared they had been forgotten. (It turned out they had.) They were remarkably sanguine while Mr Reen and I grumbled about how the Riverside Cafe wasn’t like it used to be, although, even then, under its previous management, it was pretty chaotic. At least they served breakfasts all day though. 

On the plus side it’s heartening that this lovely spot on the banks of the River Lea hasn’t yet been snapped up by a load of hipsters wanting to charge you nine point five for a tiny portion of organic scrambled eggs on sourdough. The Riverside Cafe is a greasy spoon and prices are agreeably low.

My omelette arrived before our neighbours’ food and it was, I have to admit, very good. Generously proportioned with plenty of chips on the side, coleslaw and a fresh, if rather small, salad. Only five point five too. Mr Reen’s Americano was, in his words, ‘foul’. He suspected it was made from Lidl’s coffee. He watched me eat and then made me go up to Spark Cafe in Springfield Park (reviewed favourably elsewhere on this site), where I watched him eat a proper breakfast. He gave me a small bite of his sausage.

Big Jones, Chicago, USA

Big Jones
5347 N Clark St., Chicago
773-275-5725
www.bigjoneschicago.com

by T. N. Toost

I found myself, on 5 July, breakfasting with a former Tokyo dominatrix, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion/stand-up comedian, and a prostitute.

I could have predicted breakfast with Natsuki and John; she has been my best friend since college, and it was natural that I’d want to meet her amazing new boyfriend. Having breakfast with an honest-to-God prostitute was something I never would have predicted. But the previous day, the Fourth of July, we’d all gone over to pick Nora up at her apartment – or, rather, one of her apartments, because she did business out of one and lived in the other. She called it the “HOstel.” She asked if we wanted to come up to see it, and, in reality, I didn’t, but I did anyway to be polite, and, in reality, I kind of did want to see it.

Prostitution is something that I intellectually believe should be decriminalized. People should be able to sell their services and their bodies in any way they wish, provided they don’t harm others and are not being exploited. Plus, to a certain extent, we all sell sex in some way; as Brendan Behan once quipped, the difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less.

At the same time, I had a visceral negative reaction to being in a functioning brothel that I never would have anticipated. Standing in the living room of her work space, next to a strap-on dildo and variously sized paddles and two massive deer heads hanging on the wall, listening to a detailed account of how long it took to paint the 20-foot walls, and how the massage table only cost $150, and how they had to have a pile of new sponges for washing toys, and how they had elaborate plans to soundproof the rooms from the family living below them – standing there, I realized that my arms were tightly crossed in front of my body, and my mouth was drawn grimly against my teeth, and that I was very, very uncomfortable. I forced myself to uncross my arms and relax my face, and I listened, without comment, to a story about the fight she was having with her landlord to get a separate buzzer for her room so that her clients could be independently buzzed in and wouldn’t be seen by the clients of her partner.

Writing this, one week later, it strikes me that she is actually running her business pretty professionally – the only thing that gives it any salaciousness is the fact that society is so hung up on sex. She has to think about how to report her income, and securing business, and competition, and advertising, and government overreach, and land use issues, and overhead. She has databases to check whether potential clients are deadbeats, and online forums to discuss new business developments. When she goes out of town on business, she calls it being “on tour,” and she has to find places to work, new clients, and negotiate fees ahead of time to cover her travel expenses. And she thinks of little details, like filling her fridge with coconut water and cans of San Pellegrino. She didn’t say this, but I think she had San Pellegrino because of the foil cap on the cans that you peel back in order to sip it. It makes people like me feel less worried about drinking it; the foil acts as a condom, keeping germs from getting on the can and thus to my lips. I sipped it, delicately, as she told us that one of the persistent hazards of her work was sharting.

Prostitutes also pay close attention to their health. As she sat across the table from me that beautiful, clear Chicago morning, she was sweaty, after having biked 15 miles along the shores of Lake Michigan. When the food arrived, she had a huge plate of buckwheat pancakes topped with raspberries; they were gluten free, and she paired it with a Sazerac. I had “Eugene’s Breakfast in Mobile, circa 1930,” a dish inspired by a jazz musician who decided to become a chef. The catfish was delicious, the breading was light brown and flaky, the plantains and beans and rice were all seasoned perfectly. I washed it down with strong, black coffee.

And then there was the question of etiquette that might only come up when dining with a prostitute. I had no problem passing along a piece of catfish and plantains to her, but then she reciprocated. When she cut off a piece of pancake, placed a raspberry on top, and passed it onto my plate with her fork, I paused. She saw five clients a day, at times, and I thought of the dildo on the wall, and remembered how she had licked powdered sugar off of her fork as if it were a lollipop. That was the same fork that had speared the raspberry and the pancake and then had dropped both pieces of food onto my plate, on the edge, so it wouldn’t mix with my food. I swallowed hard for a second, considering how I might decline.

But I didn’t. She was my friend before she was a prostitute.

And her pancakes were, admittedly, delicious.

The Terrace Cafeteria at the House of Commons, Westminster

The Terrace Cafeteria
House of Commons
Westminster
SW1A 0AA
(MPs, certain staff and their guests only)

by Marge E. Reen

Parliament is prorogued—ie on a break between one session and the next—and the MPs are, according to the press, ‘on holiday’ but actually they’re more likely to be in their constituencies worrying what to do about UKIP. It’s a May morning just after the local council elections and I take advantage of the calm by having a leisurely breakfast in my workplace. The Terrace Cafeteria is where I come most days for lunch but, as I don’t want to end up like Sir Nicholas Soames, I don’t usually breakfast here as well.

The Terrace is comfortingly old-fashioned with a Pugin-tiled serving area and a wood-panelled, green-carpeted dining room which overlooks the Thames. According to a friend who went to one, it’s like being in a boarding school refectory, and on this unseasonably rainy morning, I feel especially cosseted from the outside world. Modernisms have crept in—to my dismay they now have an electronic screen, which announces the menus of the day, but, for the most part, it’s as unchanging as Michael Fabricant’s hairdo.

At 10 am the Terrace is busy with burly builders, fat policemen and thin researchers. The canteen staff are, as ever, friendly and professional. Breakfast items sweat gently under a heat lamp on the serving counter. I take one rasher of bacon, one sausage, one hash brown and one spoon each of scrambled eggs, tinned tomatoes and mushrooms along with one small cup of filter coffee. All this comes to £3.60. An absolute bargain. It tastes good too. The scrambled eggs are creamy, the sausage herby and plump, the bacon entirely decent and the hash brown a slightly naff guilty pleasure. I do like the fact the tomatoes are tinned as fresh tomatoes can be so hard and tasteless. The mushrooms are a particular delight: unctuous with dark, savoury juices. After all this I feel ready to stride the corridors of power and look David Cameron straight in the eye should I bump into him, which of course I don’t.

Op-Egg: Why I Hate Going Out for Breakfast

by Fyodor Toastoevsky

Before moving to London from a sleepy West Midlands town I’d never given breakfast 'out' much thought; it was only when time or location necessitated it that I’d reluctantly take my eggs à la God-knows-whom, and it was precisely because it was necessitated that the food’s quality had never really mattered.

The difference between a greasy spoon breakfast and a breakfast at home is enormous; I have time for the former, as I am unlikely to prepare myself a white bap stuffed with bacon and dripping with grease and brown sauce. Therefore, when, on occasion, I have found myself eating a greasy-spoon breakfast, I have treated it as a different beast and thoroughly enjoyed it for what it is.

Here, in a city offering a chance for real community, though, I have found myself, for the first time, seeing people actively going out of their way to eat breakfast away from home despite having easy access to their kitchens, ample time and good ingredients. Somewhat naively, I  initially took this to mean that breakfasts ‘out’ in the capital were a cut above the rest.

I will beat around no bushes here; I am a scholar of homemade breakfasts. I am an expert in eggs, an artist in accompaniments and a maestro of the multitasking required to produce a fine breakfast. I was not born with these expertise; I worked on them weekly, with dedication and love, for even from a young age I could see the value inherent in them. Given that these are, with just a little patience, skills quite within our mortal grasps, it seems ridiculous that we should go through life without honing them, and absurd that we should spend the veritable bags of money requested by twee cafes to consume a love-starved and unsatisfying breakfast.

I do understand spending money on dining; if nothing else it’s probably the best way of experiencing cuisine you may not at home. Breakfast out, however, is beyond my comprehension. Its creation is neither a complicated nor an expensive procedure; yet when we eat it out we often spend a sickening amount just to have it as we wish. I mean, damn it, I shouldn't have to pay extra for coffee (or again for a second cup, should I wish it) and certainly I shouldn't have to do so for the basic privilege of bacon, as a fellow contributor once had to at Stoke Newington's Blue Legume. For a comparative drop in the bucket, I can feed a table of friends a lazy weekend feast the likes of which cash will not buy in the outside world.

Finances aside, it is a joy to prepare one’s own breakfast. There is no rush, there is no inexplicable wait, there is no want for space, and most importantly of all, the food is good and plentiful, every time. There is also, damn it, as much coffee as we like.

"But!" I hear you clamouring, "the washing up! The time! The effort of it all!" - well, to quote Theodore Roosevelt: "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…", and let's be honest with ourselves; investing a little time in achieving the perfect start to your weekend is surely a sacrifice of far more worth than casting a fistful of money at a small plate of lukewarm non-breakfast and a cup of coffee you have to savour.

I implore you to remember the home-cooked breakfast, each of which is your own work of art, never quite the same twice. Don’t risk your valuable time and money on the whims of stony-faced cafe staff and nameless breakfast chefs.

Take control of your breakfasts and you take control of your weekends; take control of your weekends and you take control of your life.

Erba Brusca, Milan

Erba Brusca
Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, 286, 20142
Milan
Italy
www.erbabrusca.it

by Maggie Arto

The phenomenon of brunch has arrived in Italy, though I guess, fairly recently. The late-middle-aged gent on the adjacent table, enjoying a chilled red with his wife, leans over to our plate of pancakes and enquires which item on the menu they are. “Pancakes di farino di riso con semi di papavero e bacon,” I say, with the thought that if the word “pancake” has not been widely adopted into the Anglo-Italian vocabulary, they must not be particularly prevalent. But good pancakes they are: rice flour with poppy seeds; light, wide rounds; slightly sweetened, with thin, almost caramelised bacon atop.

Erba Brusca is situated alongside one of Milan's canals, on the outskirts of town. The city was once weaved with these mercantile waterways, which Leonardo da Vinci worked on in the 15th century, but most were covered over by the 1930s, leaving only certain strips open to the air. Wandering along the banks towards our reservation, we’d spotted a pair of dancing cyan dragonflies, and so were already feeling peachy as we sat down on the early summer’s terrace and our mimosas arrived. The owners have spent time in New York – as you might imagine what with the pancakes and the typical drink types – but in New York they don't always make mimosas with freshly squeezed blood orange; nor do they consider a hamburger, or roast beef, an item for brunch (or do they?). 

Indeed, the other “brunch” plates are more of a lunch affair, though executed with a freshness that is welcome for the first meal of the day. I have cured trout in pink slices, horseradish cream and fat redcurrants, with mustardy leaves picked from the garden. Here, we could be in Sweden. My companion chooses a panzanella of fried stale bread, cubed cucumber, basil and plentiful ripe tomatoes, dotted with buffalo milk mozzarella that tastes like the pastures of Lombardia itself. This mix of salty carb and proteins is befitting of brunch – and say what you like about Italians, but you can't fault their tomatoes. There is an egg dish - fried with salsiccie and asparagus - that called itself “Eggs Benedict”, but we don't order it. It looks more like a Spanish huevos revueltos; another breakfast item so lost in translation it ended up close to lunch. There are a couple of baked goods, including a plum cake made with ricotta (plum cake, in Anglo-Italian equals moist madeira-like cake, nothing to do with plums), which people are treating like dessert. Perhaps the only thing that truly distinguishes brunch from other meals in Italy, I think to myself, is its occurrence on a Sunday – that, or the absence of pizza and pasta from the menu.

Global Breakfast Radio

Global Breakfast Radio is a month old today. You may have spotted it when I discreetly added a link to the sidebar, but if for some reason that passed you by, it's here.

What the hell am I talking about? Global Breakfast Radio is an internet radio station made out of other radio stations, always broadcasting from wherever it's breakfast-time right now. It's a collaboration between me and the sound artist Daniel Jones, and maybe isn't really that much about breakfast at all.

Press play on the website and you'll constantly follow the sunrise, dropping in on one radio station after another for ten minutes at a time before randomly moving on to the next. You might hear college radio from Canterbury, news discussion from Lagos, rock & roll radio from Anchorage, crackly Spanish music from Montevideo, and so on, all the way around the planet.

Since Global Breakfast Radio launched we've been surprised by how many places people are listening from. It's done really well in the UK and US but is also pretty big in Japan and Russia. Listeners from 135 countries have tuned in, including in the US Virgin Islands, Myanmar, Togo, and Zimbabwe. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the sunrise images in the background, and the local weather data pulled from networked weather stations across the globe. For the former we had to filter over 10,000 creative commons-licensed sunrise images sourced from Flickr. It was interesting and gruelling: some people will tag anything with the word ‘sunrise’.

For more in-depth writing about the project, I recommend this brilliant piece at the Guardian TV & Radio blog, and these interviews at Wired UK and The Line of Best Fit.

And if you like your background material meta then there's some breakfast radio on the subject of breakfast radio that went out a couple of weeks ago on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday morning show, Broadcasting House.

Seb Emina
4 June 2014

Café Margaux, New York, USA

Café Margaux
Marlton Hotel
5 West 8th Street
New York
NY 10011
USA
marltonhotel.com/#dining

by Séggolène Royal

New Yorkers are a demanding lot.

I say this with affection, because as a native New Yorker they are my lot. It’s a loud, dirty place with tiny living spaces and the potential for atrocious weather that still retains much of the grit Giuliani and Bloomberg tried so hard to scrub off. Given this, New Yorkers feel that they are entitled to receive whatever they want, whenever they want, to make up for the fact that they are tethered to the “island that is their lives’ predicament,” as Maeve Brennan once put it. Nowhere is this entitlement more in effect than in a restaurant.

I feel bad for wait staff in New York. Not only are they probably the next Sir John Barrymore and Vanessa Redgrave waiting on me, but they have to wait on all those demanding New Yorkers, who demand to know if there is gluten, dairy, raw eggs, nuts, or whatever the latest bad thing is in what they want to order. And they want this on the side and they want to hold that and so on and so forth. They’ll tip you well for it, though. Visiting from Paris I remember with a jolt when I get the bill that my meal or drinks costs 20-30% more than I thought it would because of the generous apologetic tip at the end. And if you’ve been an easy table, if you haven’t asked for the sun (hold the moon) on your plate, you’re still a scheister if you don’t pony up.

As a native New Yorker I occasionally like to take this privilege for a ride. This morning at Café Margaux at the Marlton Hotel in Greenwich Village, I ordered oatmeal with almonds, cranberries, and pomegranate seeds. But I was concerned that the oatmeal wouldn’t be sweet enough - I usually like it with maple syrup. Hey, it’s New York, I thought. I can have maple syrup if I want it. So I asked the waiter if I could have a little on the side. He hesitated, but was duty-bound to give it to me, and said he would look for some in the kitchen.

When he brought the oatmeal, it came with what looked like honey on the side. “Is that honey on the side?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Oh ok, then I don’t need the maple syrup,” I said, as he was about to pour me my coffee. “Oh!” he said, and stopped pouring the coffee. “No I did want more coffee please yes please,” I said, to get him pouring again, and he said “Yes, I just have to go tell the kitchen right away that you don’t need the maple syrup,” and fled. When he came back he finished pouring the coffee.

I dressed my oatmeal in honey and it was delicious, though the kitchen had been a bit stingy about the pomegranate seeds. Halfway through the meal, a little dish of maple syrup arrived, borne by a busboy, by which point I didn’t need it, but I poured a little in just to be nice.

Meanwhile there was the coffee. It was delicious, but the milk they brought with it was skim milk. Even though that’s what I grew up on, having been raised by New Yorkers, I have since gone off its tasteless watery whiteness. But I felt I had made enough of a fuss over the maple syrup, and so I accepted the skim milk as meekly as an out-of-towner.

Malcolm enjoyed his salmon but complained that his scrambled eggs were overdone. “That is standard scrambled,” I told him. “An American would react with horror and salmonella fear if they were served runny. But they’re entitled to their overdone eggs; it’s our responsibility to remember to ask for them the way we like them.”

There are some things, however, that a New Yorker should not be able to order. The menu included scrambled eggs with chicken, and this is one of them.

Pret a Manger, Euston

Pret a Manger
P1
Euston Piazza
Euston station
NW1 2DY
020 7932 5432
www.pret.com

by Haulin' Oats

What is it about the service in Pret a Manger? From where comes the unforced, invigorating, positive energy? The busier it gets, the happier they seem to get. There’s a spirited ‘all hands on deck’ atmosphere. I swear I can hear the white sails ripple and snap as this honest crew, this band of merry brothers and sisters navigate, undaunted and thrillingly alive, the storms of hungry office workers.

All of which is ironic because the guy who serves me is a real c**t.

No eye contact, not a flicker of evidence that he's interacting with a fellow human being. This is rude, it’s belligerent, it’s bad service – but it doesn't earn him the c-word moniker. It’s this that promotes him; the girl behind me is tall, blonde and pretty. He’s smiling at her, animated, he’s all small talk and charm. He shoves a coffee loosely in my direction without a glance. What a c**t.

He's a Pret exception. They exist. Of course they do.

As I sit down at my table that thing happens which we will never know or understand. I throw my coffee all over the floor.

One of the crew is there quickly. She’s trying to make me feel as if the spill is absolutely nothing to do with me. ‘It happens ten times a day, or more! I blame the cups. There’s something wrong with the cups...’

A former or off duty brother/shipmate walks in (you can tell by the warm camaraderie of their greeting). They talk about her being pregnant. Then she's down on the floor, pregnant and vital clearing up my coffee. She brings me a replacement, offers to fetch sugar. The spirit of Pret Service fills the sails once more.

And now a sentence that would utterly horrify my teenage-self: what I wouldn't give to get the inside track on Pret’s hiring processes.

The little granola in a pot is pretty good. The granola has crunch and cluster (though there’s too little of it in proportion to the rest). The yoghurt is tangy and crisp. The compote has a good fruity zing. Overall the portion is small for breakfast, but then you’re paying a little less than a full blown regular cafe granola.

The indie idiot in me, the part that can't help but slightly go off a band if they get hugely successful, feels a little concerned about this gush of positivity for such a large chain. But you know what? Pret revolutionised grabbing a quick lunch for urban dwellers, and their service is a modern wonder, so well done them.

Green Room Cafe, Stoke Newington

Green Room Cafe
113 Stoke Newington Church St
Stoke Newington
N16 0UD

by S. Presso

A Church Street florist has grown to occupy the entire ground floor and garden of its shop front, and now calls itself the Green Room Cafe. The staff bring menus after you sit down but they are not particularly good at bringing anything to you, including menus. Once they arrive we can order cappuccinos, a vegetarian breakfast and a lentil stew.

The cappuccinos are virtually babyccinos. The food, although prompt to arrive, is accompanied by only forks. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of fork-only eating when appropriate. But these dishes need more: the stew needs a knife as it comes with rice and salad which needs to be gathered (if I’m honest, it could do with a spoon too) and the vegetarian breakfast is in every way a knife-and-fork meal. We put in our requests for knives and we wait. When you have hot food in front of you and you can’t dig in, impatience mushrooms, so, ninety seconds later, I request knives again from the owner who promptly delivers them with apologies, followed moments later by more knives and eye-rolling from the other waitress.

Home-made baked beans are rare: these are good. My vegetarian sausage is dense and tasty and you can tell it’s home-made as it is shaped like a penis. The eggs were listed as fried. I ordered scrambled. They arrive poached. But poached well. The fried tomato is exactly that. The fried mushrooms are the borrower variety: tiny but delicious. The bubble and squeak is the disappointment. As a main constituent it needs to hold the dish together and work with everything on the fork but it is bland, mushy and unseasoned.

The lentil stew is not my dish but the mouthfuls I had were good if also a little under-seasoned. Obviously this is not a breakfast but I brandish it as evidence of a limited menu.

The bland interior contributes much to the lifeless atmosphere. The main attractions are repurposed sewing-machine tables and wall-mounted crates that serve as storage. Constantly under-served tables drive diners to approach the counter for their own menus and again to order. Most tables have someone twisted in their chair vying for attention.

The breakfast is turbulent if enjoyable and we are happy to leave. And appropriately, the process is long-winded. You pay at the till. A lycra-clad cyclist is skating the floorboards as we try to put jackets on inches away from a couple trying to eat. The breakfast comes to 20 pounds for two meals, cappuccinos and cookies. Not so bad. Admittedly the food was pretty good: one of the better vegetarian breakfasts in the area. Trouble is, the café feels immature. The owners are eager but some of their staff are letting them down. Small changes here could make a big winner.

Goody Goody Diner, St. Louis, USA

Goody Goody Diner

5900 Natural Bridge Ave.

St. Louis, Missouri 63120

www.goodygoodydiner.com

by Louie Slinger

It's a diner, in an urban, old and rather industrial neighborhood. Connolly's Goody Goody Diner began in a converted root beer stand in 1948, and Richard Connolly has never worked anywhere else. Breakfast all day, six days a week - there's lunch, but their reputation, still growing after all these years, is all about morning food.

The kids have discovered chicken and waffles, and Goody's version is exemplary, the chicken hot and fresh and greaseless, to dab with syrup or not as you eat the waffle underneath. But serious breakfast folks have hard choices, lots of them. Which of fourteen meat options? Which of twelve ways to have them cook your eggs? Pancakes – hotcakes, as the menu styles them – or waffles or French toast? Rice, grits or hash brown potatoes? Omelets? Skillets, a sort of mashup of different things? Or just a breakfast sandwich?

I frequently succumb, though, to the country fried steak – beef pounded, breaded and fried until brown, topped with a milky pan gravy, and some over-easy eggs and grits. Or else it's the Wilbur omelet, their take on a St. Louis tradition, the omelet filled with potatoes, onions, sweet green peppers and tomato, then topped with chili and shredded cheese. (By legend, good for hangovers, better at preventing them.) Or else there's the catfish and American-style biscuits.

Much of the food style is of the soul food/Southern kitchen tradition, but the crowd here is gloriously mixed: mechanics and ministers, tourists and students, police and politicians. Al Gore stopped by during one presidential campaign. Richard Connolly is pretty much always on hand. They do lots of takeaway, and there's often a line, but it's worth waiting for. Study the huge menu while you're waiting, watch the hard-working staff, who really earn their Sundays off, and make sure you take advantage of some first-rate eavesdropping.

Bluebelles, Portobello Rd

Bluebelles
320 Portobello Road
Kensal Town
W10 5RU
020 8968 4572

by Haulin' Oats

Oh no.

One of the most common and, perhaps, saddest of granola sins. An easily avoidable failure right at the final hurdle. My granola arrives in a glass.

The delights of achieving the perfect proportions of granola, yoghurt and compote according to whim have now been destroyed. The Pollock-esque creative freedom of sometimes mixing elements together in great swathes or perhaps making small, continuing adjustments - flicks and flourishes - is now dismantled. Even doing nothing at all, like Fonzy in the mirror, and eating the granola, yoghurt and compote separately, in the order you so desire, is no longer possible.

In a glass you’re operating in impossibly cramped conditions. Claustrophobia rises as you dig down to try and reach an element. Over mixing is inevitable. Your control has been destroyed.

Also, glasses tend to be smaller than bowls. With granola, especially, there’s nothing worse than being under-served.

It’s a tall glass. It's filled with yoghurt, berry compote and then a meagre sprinkling of sorry supermarket ‘basics’ looking granola on top. It reaches to half-way up the vessel, leaving me feeling hard done by in a, errr, glass half empty kind of way. It looks like an agoraphobic sundae. It’s the last thing a breakfast already struggling under a light-weight, frivolous image needs.

The granola has a supermarket basics taste. The compote is underwhelming and manages the ignominious trick of being not sweet enough and missing a fruity tartness too.

The yoghurt isn’t very nice.

My glass half empty of granola is finished almost as soon as I’ve embarked on my cramped spoon manoeuvring.

I do want to cry a little bit.

So much so, cake rescue needs to be undertaken. And, my, does the pear and almond polenta cake save souls. Moist, delicately sweet with a strong taste of pears complemented by a judicious amount of chocolate and whole hazelnuts on top. Much more like it.

Bluebelles does have a pleasing ambience. That cake was really, very good. The waitress gave me a pick of excellent speciality breads to take home for free because it was the end of the day (perhaps sensing my earlier disappointment?). However, the granola was obviously a careless afterthought thrown in to appease addicts, which is so often the case in London. It really is an opportunity missed though, because if you do get it right that granola addict is your friend for life. AND WE WILL MAKE YOU RICH. So, buck up, London cafes.

The Ace Hotel/Hoi Polloi, Shoreditch

The Ace Hotel/Hoi Polloi
100 Shoreditch High Street
Shoreditch
E1 6JQ
www.hoi-polloi.co.uk

by Haulin' Oats

The first thing you notice upon walking into the Ace Hotel is that there’s an awful lot of stuff for sale. Ace Hotel branded T-shirts, baseball caps and two-tone duffle coats are all available, though the staff are kitted out in these, so you’d have to be careful wearing them on site - someone might ask you to do something. Or sell them something,

There are brand new vintage bikes dotted around, replete with faux leather saddles, which you can buy. There’s vinyl tiling the front of the reception desk that you can buy (things like the Easy Rider soundtrack and Fleetwood Mac albums, of course). There’s an old school photo booth which maybe you can’t buy. The chairs at one table are mid century vintage, at the other Swedish minimal. One wall is exposed concrete, another opaque wired glass. The strategy seems to be; if it’s hipster, or kind of arty or sort of design - chuck it in. Perhaps the vision was to achieve a type of maximal, characterful ambience but it just feels confused, contrived and a bit crap.

My friend said it sounds like an East London theme park. He’s good at summing things up.

Unable to find a menu I’m pointed to a thin fanzine with Hoi Polloi printed on the front. It turns out that I’m actually in Hoi Polloi, an ‘English Modernist Brasserie’ from the people behind the cross-dressing and dining stalwart Bistrotheque. It drapes itself across the Ace Hotel reception meandering into a coffee shop area and subsequently through to a more dedicated restaurant.

My latte arrives warm and not extra hot as requested (perhaps satisfying a coffee Nazi responsible for its creation that "the flavour of the milk has remained unimpaired").

The granola has a home-baked feel, a lovely dark colour, but isn’t sweet enough. And in a rare granola switcherooni there are actually too many nuts. I know! But there are.

The compote is 3 strips of rhubarb, which has an incredible perfumed flavour balanced perfectly on the sweet-tart axis. However, its not compote-y (gooey) enough. You can’t divide the stalks with your spoon to get the desired proportions for your mouthful. And there’s not enough of it. The overall amount, is reasonable. Not generous, but enough.

I was really hoping for an Ace-hole in one for this granola experience. I thought the hype and big hotel success would help deliver it. However, mildly satisfied, a couple under par, I move on.