The London Review of Breakfasts

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

Friday, July 18, 2008

Café Rogerio’s, Putney

Café Rogerio’s
Putney High Street
Putney
SW15 1RX
www.rogeriosrestaurant.com

by Blake Pudding

I am always amazed by the general ineptitude in my office at making tea. Granted this is exacerbated by the weedy, Fair Trade teabags that those in charge of office supplies insist on buying – why can’t they be delicious and ethical? Or just delicious? Anyway the common technique seems to be: boil the water, leave for 5 minutes, pour onto the teabag and then immediately add lots of milk before any tea extraction can have taken place, remove teabag, add dregs from the bottom of the kettle and then serve. The tea at Café Rogerio’s was even worse than this. It tasted like it had come from those Lipton yellow label teabags that you get in holiday resorts where they really hate the English. Katie, one of the few in my office able to make tea, described it as a “tea-style drink.”

She was also disappointed by the smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. I think we all expected a mound of creamy eggs with lots of oily fish. Instead there were some school scrambled eggs with some miserly rashers of dry salmon. For this we were charged £5.40. My ladyfriend Alice and I went for something more meaty. Their nearest approximation of a Full English was OK. The sausages were at the top end of the budget range but by then we had lost interest.

Café Rogerio’s has the look of a café that was remodelled to cash in on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. There are even Gaudi-esque mosaics. The food tastes a bit like this too - quite good coffee, paninis etc but no idea how to make a nice cup of tea and in a breakfast place this is unforgivable.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

dear Mr Pudding.
sorry to ear that you don't have a very good experience at my cafe,
our quality is good and we try hard to give a very good value for money,our prices are the lowest in putney,sometimes things do go wrong as with any business,the tea we serve on a tea pot with sep,milk,and the quality of tea bags are we and many of our customers believe is very good,maybe next time you ask to be changed,we will be Moore than happy to do so,my apologies and hope to serve you again

5:57 PM, August 30, 2008  
Blogger sofia souza said...

Dear Mr. Pudding
I don't agree with regarding your opinion about Cafe Rogerios. I've never had a bad experience at Cafe Rogerios, I also have a, excellence food and a good service.
Just to show you how much I like Cafe Rogerios, I'd like to say that when my friends from Italy come to visit in London, the first thing they ask, was to have a English breakfast.
I live in Putney, and the best place to have a fantastic English breakfast is called Cafe Rogerios. My favourite is breakfast number 5.The quality of the tomatos, mushrooms, sausage, etc is the best for me. So I went there with my friends, and I'd like to say that they loved it and now every time they come to visit me, Cafe Rogerios is one of our places to go. I really like to go to Cafe Rogerios and to take all my friends and family, because everytime I go there, I have great food and excellent service.
Also the staff is very friendly, also they have an excellent lunch menu, that goes from pastas to paninos (by the way they have really good paninos, especially the special one called Steak panino). Also they have a childrens menu, that is great. and the dessert menu is thing from heaven. They also make excellent pizzas, they are really good. They have home made italian icecream and excellents cakes (warm apple pie with icecream, chocolate cake, home made tiramisu, cream caramel. Also they include now brasilian specialities, they called "cochinha" and "pao de queijo", they are really good. One of the things that I had also a good experience, Cafe Rogerios have outside catering service, I used their service for my company,and they were perfect, they did brie with grapes, asparagus with cream cheese, a selection of sandwiches form vegetarian, meat, fish, also they did potato skins with different fillings, also everybody was impressed with everything but especially with the a platter with king prawns, salmon and an especial sauce.Fantastic. I can say that Cafe Rogerios is a great choice for a family, friends or business.
I recommend Cafe Rogerios to everybody

10:15 PM, August 30, 2008  
Anonymous Kirsty said...

So I'm a couple of years late but this review is spot on!
Rogerios does always seem to be busy but I am yet to figure out why as it puts out some of the worst food in SW London.

4:44 PM, April 24, 2013  
Anonymous Danny said...

Kirsty, the reason Rogerios is always busy is because people aren't stupid and, with an ever-increasing amount of competition, they consistently offer the best food, coffee and service. Yes, from time to time something may not be perfect but in many years I have never experienced the slightest resistance to putting it right. WITH AN APOLOGY, SMILE and usually a complimentary coffee as a gesture of goodwill.

People have a BIG CHOICE, especially in PUTNEY, and they clearly CHOOSE to frequent the place that offers the BEST overall quality and value for money.

I'd be keen to know how many or what % of eating establishments in SW LDN you have frequented to justify what appears to be a scathing generalisation. Unless you were just having an off day. In which case I hope things have improved for you.

6:23 PM, May 21, 2013  

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