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.