*****THIS CAFE HAS CLOSED*****
Café RED
298 Kentish Town Road
Kentish Town
NW5 2TG
020 7482 7300
by Poppy Tartt
Jordan picked the restaurant. He said the name held a special significance for him. That was before we knew about the acronym. RED actually stands for ‘Really Excellent Dining’. I don’t think Jordan knows much about Really Excellent Dining. All I’ve ever seen him eat was a little piece of ham.
Jordan Catalano sailed to me on a dreamboat from a psychic fantasia. I’ve been in love with him since I was fourteen. So here he is, defying the real, even the fact that his body belongs to a vegan film star who wears eyeliner. He’s so beautiful I could yelp. Thank you, world, for cracking my dream and bringing me this quivering yolk of a man!
He’s unable to read the menu of course, so I order him a Red breakfast. It seems almost wrong to eat. I’m having Eggs Benedict – though I’m not sure there’s a place for eggs in the psychic fantasia. It’s hard to feel dreamy when there are eggs around. I don’t know if I want to see Jordan Catalano eat blood pudding.
We are served by a jovial spiller. The breakfast is good enough to eat. Only the eggs are perfect though, pert whites holding trembling yellows like breath in a cheek. They are ruined by the vinegary hollandaise, a graze on my tongue, which recalls to me fantasy’s unhappy aftertaste. As we leave, Jordan breaks into song. “I was going nowhere, going nowhere fast, drowning in my memories, living in the past. Everything looked black until I found her – she’s all I need, that’s what I said. Oh oh oh – I call her RED. She’s my shelter from the storm, she’s a place to rest my head; late at night she keeps me safe and warm. I call her RED.” In truth, reality eats dreams.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Friday, November 09, 2007
Gastro, Clapham
Gastro
67 Venn Street
Clapham
SW4 0BD
020 7627 0222
by Rhys Chris Peese
There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing something done perfectly, and Gastro does two things perfectly. The first is scrambled eggs. I don’t much like scrambled eggs, but I was wholly won over by the rich buttery flavour and succulent texture. The second is being French. They couldn’t be much more French if they tried. Indeed, the very lack of effort elevates them to further levels of Gallicism. Boy, are they French. Really, really French.
The nicotine-brown bar is replete with mismatched furniture, battered tin adverts for Ricard and posters detailing the seafood of Brittany. But there’s no smack of ‘theme’ here: the bowls of darkly-roasted coffee confirm that this is the real deal. £4.50 gets you a Gastro Special: thick-cut streaky bacon, a small but delicious Toulouse sausage, undercooked tomato, a heap of rather bland mushrooms, and those flawless eggs.
After that, the pain au chocolat was a disappointment: not terrible, but hardly memorable. Having not breakfasted at Gastro in about ten years, the one thing I remembered, and was looking forward to most, was the chocolat chaud bol. Alas, another disappointment; chocolat froid bol. Froid et mélangé insuffisamment. Bof!
Entertainment at the big communal table was provided by the witless, strident public school banter of the students we shared it with. At one point they even compared provision for History of Art courses at Edinburgh, Bristol, York and Durham. But that’s the price you pay for eating in Clapham.
Service is friendly, if insouciant. You expect every request to be met with a ‘peut-être’ rather than a ‘oui’, and indeed the bread we were offered to accompany our breakfasts never appeared: not so much pain-perdu as pain-oublié. Have I mentioned that they really are very, very French?
67 Venn Street
Clapham
SW4 0BD
020 7627 0222
by Rhys Chris Peese
There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing something done perfectly, and Gastro does two things perfectly. The first is scrambled eggs. I don’t much like scrambled eggs, but I was wholly won over by the rich buttery flavour and succulent texture. The second is being French. They couldn’t be much more French if they tried. Indeed, the very lack of effort elevates them to further levels of Gallicism. Boy, are they French. Really, really French.
The nicotine-brown bar is replete with mismatched furniture, battered tin adverts for Ricard and posters detailing the seafood of Brittany. But there’s no smack of ‘theme’ here: the bowls of darkly-roasted coffee confirm that this is the real deal. £4.50 gets you a Gastro Special: thick-cut streaky bacon, a small but delicious Toulouse sausage, undercooked tomato, a heap of rather bland mushrooms, and those flawless eggs.
After that, the pain au chocolat was a disappointment: not terrible, but hardly memorable. Having not breakfasted at Gastro in about ten years, the one thing I remembered, and was looking forward to most, was the chocolat chaud bol. Alas, another disappointment; chocolat froid bol. Froid et mélangé insuffisamment. Bof!
Entertainment at the big communal table was provided by the witless, strident public school banter of the students we shared it with. At one point they even compared provision for History of Art courses at Edinburgh, Bristol, York and Durham. But that’s the price you pay for eating in Clapham.
Service is friendly, if insouciant. You expect every request to be met with a ‘peut-être’ rather than a ‘oui’, and indeed the bread we were offered to accompany our breakfasts never appeared: not so much pain-perdu as pain-oublié. Have I mentioned that they really are very, very French?
Monday, November 05, 2007
Orient EspressO, Borough
Orient EspressO
59-61 Borough High Street
Borough
SE1 1NE
0207 7407 6266
by Bree Oche
Borough on a drizzly Sunday is a depressing place. The Saturday hustle of the market a lingering memory, the streets are sparsely scattered with lost tourists and harried-looking locals. It was with great disappointment that I registered the Sunday closure of Harpers, a friendly-looking Italian spoon whose neon “Full English £3.70” had been whetting my appetite for some time. A slightly soggy hangover scrum ensued, the result being a table for two in the colourful and slightly manic Orient EspressO.
The café exuded the potent whiff of a youth hostel or college canteen, the tables covered with a montage of tourist mockery and popular culture icons, plastered down with sticky backed plastic. Despite there being no Full English, a dose of Eggs Benedict clocked in at a mere £3.50, whilst the friendly atmosphere and brightly lettered blackboards lent the room and feeling of heartfelt sincerity. A quarter of an hour after ordering, our coffees finally appeared on the distant horizon of the service counter, the sole waitress / barista / chef coping remarkably well under the obvious duress of staff shortages. Despite her best efforts however, the quality of the food was another matter.
What I was presented with was the kind of meal one would expect to stumble across in a McDonalds, should they ever decide to create ‘Eggs McBenedict’ - two rubbery poached eggs perched lopsidedly on a fold of cold ham on a semi-toasted English muffin, drowning in a sea of yellow, packet-mixed Hollandaise sauce. Oh, with a side of toast and blackcurrant jam, on the same plate, also sat in the Hollandaise. Fittingly, there was also a shortage of actual cutlery in the building, so I had to make do with the dreaded plastic variety.
Five minutes and one broken fork later, I physically could not bring myself to continue eating. The mere memory of the slimy, solid eggs and the puckered skin of the sauce turns my stomach even now. Indeed, as a way of comparison, I even began to believe that the combination of jam and Hollandaise was actually pretty good. Enough said.
59-61 Borough High Street
Borough
SE1 1NE
0207 7407 6266
by Bree Oche
Borough on a drizzly Sunday is a depressing place. The Saturday hustle of the market a lingering memory, the streets are sparsely scattered with lost tourists and harried-looking locals. It was with great disappointment that I registered the Sunday closure of Harpers, a friendly-looking Italian spoon whose neon “Full English £3.70” had been whetting my appetite for some time. A slightly soggy hangover scrum ensued, the result being a table for two in the colourful and slightly manic Orient EspressO.
The café exuded the potent whiff of a youth hostel or college canteen, the tables covered with a montage of tourist mockery and popular culture icons, plastered down with sticky backed plastic. Despite there being no Full English, a dose of Eggs Benedict clocked in at a mere £3.50, whilst the friendly atmosphere and brightly lettered blackboards lent the room and feeling of heartfelt sincerity. A quarter of an hour after ordering, our coffees finally appeared on the distant horizon of the service counter, the sole waitress / barista / chef coping remarkably well under the obvious duress of staff shortages. Despite her best efforts however, the quality of the food was another matter.
What I was presented with was the kind of meal one would expect to stumble across in a McDonalds, should they ever decide to create ‘Eggs McBenedict’ - two rubbery poached eggs perched lopsidedly on a fold of cold ham on a semi-toasted English muffin, drowning in a sea of yellow, packet-mixed Hollandaise sauce. Oh, with a side of toast and blackcurrant jam, on the same plate, also sat in the Hollandaise. Fittingly, there was also a shortage of actual cutlery in the building, so I had to make do with the dreaded plastic variety.
Five minutes and one broken fork later, I physically could not bring myself to continue eating. The mere memory of the slimy, solid eggs and the puckered skin of the sauce turns my stomach even now. Indeed, as a way of comparison, I even began to believe that the combination of jam and Hollandaise was actually pretty good. Enough said.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Special Dispatch: Starbucks, Beijing Capital International Airport, China
Starbucks
Terminal 2
Beijing Capital International Airport
China
by Des Ayuno
It takes a lot for me to set foot in a Starbucks – especially when delicacies like tea eggs, mustard pickles, red-bean buns and tooth-erodingly sweet soya gruel appear in even the humblest local breakfasts. But the only other option airside offered clingfilm-wrapped, condensation-sodden plates of noodles microwaved-while-u-wait. (Though I often enjoy mysterious street-market snacks that my nice, middle-class translator is convinced will leave me vomiting for days, mushy noodles were a bridge too far.) I queued up for a steaming mug of rapacious global capitalism behind a regrettably overweight pair of ladies from the American northeast. One interrogated a waitress about the availability of the kind of novelty coffees the ordering of which is a pretty good gauge of slappability. “Frappucino? Caramel macchiato? Chai tea laa-taay?” she repeated, ever louder and slower, as the waitress’ look of polite confusion settled into rictus.
My macchiato, though it had enough milk to send any red-blooded Italian apoplectic, was of the reliable, border-defying standard that is the whole point of places like Starbucks: it tasted exactly as it would in London, or Lithuania. In a nation that credits tea with the ability to cure everything from insomnia to cancer, it was an achievement. Avoiding “ethnic” versions of standard baked goods, I went for a carrot muffin, which came in an impressive-looking clamshell-style moulded-plastic carton I spent ten minutes trying to open, and then cut my finger on. It was still stale. It cost as much as ten breakfasts from the canteen of the print factory I’d come to visit, or three hours’ wages for the people who work there, or an amount some Londoners wouldn’t stoop to pick up in the street. That it didn’t leave me vomiting for days is the most that can be said for it.
Terminal 2
Beijing Capital International Airport
China
by Des Ayuno
It takes a lot for me to set foot in a Starbucks – especially when delicacies like tea eggs, mustard pickles, red-bean buns and tooth-erodingly sweet soya gruel appear in even the humblest local breakfasts. But the only other option airside offered clingfilm-wrapped, condensation-sodden plates of noodles microwaved-while-u-wait. (Though I often enjoy mysterious street-market snacks that my nice, middle-class translator is convinced will leave me vomiting for days, mushy noodles were a bridge too far.) I queued up for a steaming mug of rapacious global capitalism behind a regrettably overweight pair of ladies from the American northeast. One interrogated a waitress about the availability of the kind of novelty coffees the ordering of which is a pretty good gauge of slappability. “Frappucino? Caramel macchiato? Chai tea laa-taay?” she repeated, ever louder and slower, as the waitress’ look of polite confusion settled into rictus.
My macchiato, though it had enough milk to send any red-blooded Italian apoplectic, was of the reliable, border-defying standard that is the whole point of places like Starbucks: it tasted exactly as it would in London, or Lithuania. In a nation that credits tea with the ability to cure everything from insomnia to cancer, it was an achievement. Avoiding “ethnic” versions of standard baked goods, I went for a carrot muffin, which came in an impressive-looking clamshell-style moulded-plastic carton I spent ten minutes trying to open, and then cut my finger on. It was still stale. It cost as much as ten breakfasts from the canteen of the print factory I’d come to visit, or three hours’ wages for the people who work there, or an amount some Londoners wouldn’t stoop to pick up in the street. That it didn’t leave me vomiting for days is the most that can be said for it.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Flâneur, Clerkenwell
***FLANEUR HAS NOW CLOSED (BUT THE REVIEW IS STILL ENTERTAINING)***
41 Farringdon Road
Clerkenwell
EC1M 3JB
020 7404 4422
www.flaneur.com
by Phil English
Before I move on to describing a truly marvellous breakfast, I would like to address you on the unholy trinity of syphillis, buggery and condoms. As an amateur observer of socio-linguistic developments, as well as a professional breakfaster, I am interested in the way we attribute certain activities and objects to other nations. Thus, when they were engaged in squalidly trying to knock each other's heads off in the sixteenth century, the French took to referring to the pox as "Le mal italien" and the Italians said rightbackatcha, bringers of the "French disease". Similarly, the French accuse my countryfolk of "le vice anglais" and we counter that another postal strike would be welcome if you were expecting a letter from a Frenchman.
Which brings me to the subject of French toast. Presumably this is an Americanism. In England we call it eggy bread. Which is accurate and uninspired, but not offensive. Perhaps this xeno-specific appelation is a homage to pain-perdu, but I think that it's probably more along the lines of the dubious monikers above. As in, "Hey Hank, check out this toast; it's all eggy and shit. Those French dudes, man. They suck!" In these times of renaming the potato chip for reasons of geo-political outrage, I shall henceforth be terming the dish Freedom Toast. Vive La France.
I and my colleague Padraig Oates, who for the record did not order an Irish coffee, had an absolutely sumptuous breakfast at Flaneur. Oddly, though, for an overtly Gallic joint, they refer to the above dish by its American name. Still, it came rich and crispy with delicious smoked bacon and maple syrup. Mr Oates had neutral, United Nations, toast with bacon and scrambled eggs. Plus freshly squeezed orange juice, a nice pot of tea and a cup of good coffee, all for a very reasonable sum, which currently escapes me. But, where were you guys? There was no-one there. This place is serving breakfast and it's doing it now. Go.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Kings Café, Finchley
Kings Café
8 Hendon Lane
Finchley
N3 1TR
020 8346 1778
by Nelson Griddle
Up in the supremely Jewish neighbourhood of Finchley, a plateful of bacon, black pudding and other porky delights might seem an odd way to start the day. Sometimes, though, a cream cheese bagel just won’t cut it, and it was in this spirit that I went to check out the traif at Kings Café one foggy October morning.
First impressions heralded the classic greasy spoon experience. There was a chilled display cabinet full of Coke cans, a fruit machine, an England flag and proudly framed basic food hygiene certificates. Yet after a quick perusal of the big yellow menu over the counter, I began to wonder whether the staff (a team of efficient young Turkish men in yellow pique polo shirts) had really got to grips with the basics of our National Breakfast. Take Set Breakfast No 1, for example, which turns out to be liver, bubble, onions, mushrooms and beans. Set Breakfast No 3, even more alarmingly, is bubble, onions, tomato, mushrooms and – wait for it – spaghetti.
Such outlandishness was enough to prompt me off-menu, plumping for the high-protein option of egg, bacon, sausage and black pudding, plus toast and tea. I settled back, read a left-behind copy of yesterday’s Sun, and waited for the food to arrive.
When it came, my doubts were dispelled. Presentation rarely counts for terribly much in the world of the English Breakfast, but this ample portion, nestling there on a white oval plate had an undeniable visual impact. OK, it’s not nouvelle cuisine, but add a zig-zag of brown sauce and to my eye, this breakfast could have been a hot contender for food-as-art.
The meal scored high taste-wise, too. The egg was beautifully cooked, the bacon gratifyingly crisp, and although the black pudding was a trifle dry, as black pudding often tends to be, I was won over. And with no regrets about skipping the spaghetti.
8 Hendon Lane
Finchley
N3 1TR
020 8346 1778
by Nelson Griddle
Up in the supremely Jewish neighbourhood of Finchley, a plateful of bacon, black pudding and other porky delights might seem an odd way to start the day. Sometimes, though, a cream cheese bagel just won’t cut it, and it was in this spirit that I went to check out the traif at Kings Café one foggy October morning.
First impressions heralded the classic greasy spoon experience. There was a chilled display cabinet full of Coke cans, a fruit machine, an England flag and proudly framed basic food hygiene certificates. Yet after a quick perusal of the big yellow menu over the counter, I began to wonder whether the staff (a team of efficient young Turkish men in yellow pique polo shirts) had really got to grips with the basics of our National Breakfast. Take Set Breakfast No 1, for example, which turns out to be liver, bubble, onions, mushrooms and beans. Set Breakfast No 3, even more alarmingly, is bubble, onions, tomato, mushrooms and – wait for it – spaghetti.
Such outlandishness was enough to prompt me off-menu, plumping for the high-protein option of egg, bacon, sausage and black pudding, plus toast and tea. I settled back, read a left-behind copy of yesterday’s Sun, and waited for the food to arrive.
When it came, my doubts were dispelled. Presentation rarely counts for terribly much in the world of the English Breakfast, but this ample portion, nestling there on a white oval plate had an undeniable visual impact. OK, it’s not nouvelle cuisine, but add a zig-zag of brown sauce and to my eye, this breakfast could have been a hot contender for food-as-art.
The meal scored high taste-wise, too. The egg was beautifully cooked, the bacon gratifyingly crisp, and although the black pudding was a trifle dry, as black pudding often tends to be, I was won over. And with no regrets about skipping the spaghetti.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Café Fleur, Wandsworth
Café Fleur
198 St. Ann's Hill
Wandsworth
SW18 2RT
020 8874 6897
by Blake Pudding
Delightfully common, I murmured to myself with an unbecoming leer as I clocked the waitresses.
Emily and James had told us to meet them at Café Fleur. You would not know that this is its name as it just says café café café café café around the top of the caff. It was a boiling hot day (how incongruous those words seem now) and I was dressed in a look best described as 80’s gay chic- white linen trousers rolled up to show off my shapely calves, stripy vest, panama hat. Alice was wearing a dress which emphasised her cleavage. We had had about 2 hours sleep.
The café seemed to have been staffed by roguishly pretty urchins straight out of those ASBO scum girl nightmare articles that crop up in the papers now and again. They were dressed in leisure wear, hair pulled tightly back, hoop earrings, incredibly pale skin and gappy teeth. They were of course utterly charming. The caff has been done up to make it look a bit “latte” but the girls gave away its proletarian origins. Happily it did a good honest working class breakfast. Frightening sausages obviously but you will have learnt by now to avoid such things. I went for the egg, bacon, bubble, tomato, black pudding, strong tea and toast. All were unpretentiously delicious.
To finish the fortification process we strolled over to the Alma for some Young’s Special though a little sleep would have been the healthier option.
198 St. Ann's Hill
Wandsworth
SW18 2RT
020 8874 6897
by Blake Pudding
Delightfully common, I murmured to myself with an unbecoming leer as I clocked the waitresses.
Emily and James had told us to meet them at Café Fleur. You would not know that this is its name as it just says café café café café café around the top of the caff. It was a boiling hot day (how incongruous those words seem now) and I was dressed in a look best described as 80’s gay chic- white linen trousers rolled up to show off my shapely calves, stripy vest, panama hat. Alice was wearing a dress which emphasised her cleavage. We had had about 2 hours sleep.
The café seemed to have been staffed by roguishly pretty urchins straight out of those ASBO scum girl nightmare articles that crop up in the papers now and again. They were dressed in leisure wear, hair pulled tightly back, hoop earrings, incredibly pale skin and gappy teeth. They were of course utterly charming. The caff has been done up to make it look a bit “latte” but the girls gave away its proletarian origins. Happily it did a good honest working class breakfast. Frightening sausages obviously but you will have learnt by now to avoid such things. I went for the egg, bacon, bubble, tomato, black pudding, strong tea and toast. All were unpretentiously delicious.
To finish the fortification process we strolled over to the Alma for some Young’s Special though a little sleep would have been the healthier option.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Café Crescent, Camden Town
Café Crescent
40 Camden High St
Camden Town
NW1
020 7839 2823
by Nelson Griddle
****CAFÉ CRESCENT HAS NOW CLOSED. IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY CAFÉ GRILL****
Café Crescent is a mixed bag. Its yellow-painted walls announce as much with their odd jumble of theatrical posters: Dirty Dancing shares space with The Cherry Orchard and Tony Hadley in Chicago jostles with Hamlet.
The theatricality continues with the sweetly-spoken, Beatnik-themed waitress. Meanwhile, swooning classical music plays from a tape recorder, and we chomp away to the theme from The Onedin Line. Such sweeping lyricism does little to cheer my fellow punters, though, as they stare over their mugs of tea, ruminating bleakly on the iniquities of the smoking ban and the trials of life in general. The tea here is hot and strong and made in a proper steel pot
For solid sustenance, I opt for egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. They say that frying an egg is the ultimate test of a chef and on that basis the man who wields the Crescent’s spatula is a genius of the first rank. The white of my egg is beautifully firm and the yolk a perfect orb of creamy liquid which glugs satisfyingly out onto the fried bread. The bacon, too, is done to the turn, and the sausage and mushrooms both put in a performance on the right side of acceptable.
All this good work is undone, however, by the presence of tinned tomatoes. I might as well confess now to LRB readers that I cannot stand tinned tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes, I love. Grilled tomatoes, I dote on. But tinned tomatoes have, from earliest childhood, turned my stomach. There’s something unnatural – almost Lovecraftian – about these sludgy things, in their primordial confusion of solid and liquid, with a taste so weirdly overpowering as to kill any other flavour stone dead. Ordering grilled tomatoes and being given the tinned variety is like…well, a bit like wanting to see The Cherry Orchard and ending up with Tony Hadley.
Café Crescent, take note. Ah well, at least the tea’s alright.
40 Camden High St
Camden Town
NW1
020 7839 2823
by Nelson Griddle
****CAFÉ CRESCENT HAS NOW CLOSED. IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY CAFÉ GRILL****
Café Crescent is a mixed bag. Its yellow-painted walls announce as much with their odd jumble of theatrical posters: Dirty Dancing shares space with The Cherry Orchard and Tony Hadley in Chicago jostles with Hamlet.
The theatricality continues with the sweetly-spoken, Beatnik-themed waitress. Meanwhile, swooning classical music plays from a tape recorder, and we chomp away to the theme from The Onedin Line. Such sweeping lyricism does little to cheer my fellow punters, though, as they stare over their mugs of tea, ruminating bleakly on the iniquities of the smoking ban and the trials of life in general. The tea here is hot and strong and made in a proper steel pot
For solid sustenance, I opt for egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. They say that frying an egg is the ultimate test of a chef and on that basis the man who wields the Crescent’s spatula is a genius of the first rank. The white of my egg is beautifully firm and the yolk a perfect orb of creamy liquid which glugs satisfyingly out onto the fried bread. The bacon, too, is done to the turn, and the sausage and mushrooms both put in a performance on the right side of acceptable.
All this good work is undone, however, by the presence of tinned tomatoes. I might as well confess now to LRB readers that I cannot stand tinned tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes, I love. Grilled tomatoes, I dote on. But tinned tomatoes have, from earliest childhood, turned my stomach. There’s something unnatural – almost Lovecraftian – about these sludgy things, in their primordial confusion of solid and liquid, with a taste so weirdly overpowering as to kill any other flavour stone dead. Ordering grilled tomatoes and being given the tinned variety is like…well, a bit like wanting to see The Cherry Orchard and ending up with Tony Hadley.
Café Crescent, take note. Ah well, at least the tea’s alright.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Dem Cafe Bar, Stoke Newington
Dem Cafe Bar
18 Stoke Newington High St
Stoke Newington
N16 7PL
020 7254 6364
by Duke Eggington
You know what it’s like when you arrive in a small town early in the morning half asleep at the wheel. Your eyes are stinging and your stomach feels like an acid pit. Such is the mood as I wander into DEM on a Saturday morning.
After a cup of the finest Illy coffee for me, and a juice with a pink straw to match my baby’s dress for her, I order a DEM veggie breakfast – an English-Kurdish fusion. Predictably the hash brown and veggie sausage are nothing to sing and dance about, and the grilled halloumi and chilli olives aren’t to everyone’s taste - but there’s something appealing about a good dose of salt first thing in the morning. The inclusion of cold salad items like cucumber and tomato could also have some folk heading straight back out the door, but removal of surface skin in both cases kept us happy.
The baked beans on toast for my baby is nothing special, but when you’re feeding a two-year-old it’s best to keep things simple. The bread is a mixed experience: while of the authentic Turkish variety, it is also somewhere between bread and toast, neither nice and soft or entirely crispy.
In fact, the best thing about the breakfast has to be the waitress - a Middle Eastern beauty who either of us would gladly taken home, either for her generous smiles, or her free-flowing lollipops. By the time we leave we are both sewn up, but not stitched up. If we’d turned the corner onto Stoke Newington Church Street we would have had similar food at roughly double the price.
I urge you to check Dem out.
18 Stoke Newington High St
Stoke Newington
N16 7PL
020 7254 6364
by Duke Eggington
You know what it’s like when you arrive in a small town early in the morning half asleep at the wheel. Your eyes are stinging and your stomach feels like an acid pit. Such is the mood as I wander into DEM on a Saturday morning.
After a cup of the finest Illy coffee for me, and a juice with a pink straw to match my baby’s dress for her, I order a DEM veggie breakfast – an English-Kurdish fusion. Predictably the hash brown and veggie sausage are nothing to sing and dance about, and the grilled halloumi and chilli olives aren’t to everyone’s taste - but there’s something appealing about a good dose of salt first thing in the morning. The inclusion of cold salad items like cucumber and tomato could also have some folk heading straight back out the door, but removal of surface skin in both cases kept us happy.
The baked beans on toast for my baby is nothing special, but when you’re feeding a two-year-old it’s best to keep things simple. The bread is a mixed experience: while of the authentic Turkish variety, it is also somewhere between bread and toast, neither nice and soft or entirely crispy.
In fact, the best thing about the breakfast has to be the waitress - a Middle Eastern beauty who either of us would gladly taken home, either for her generous smiles, or her free-flowing lollipops. By the time we leave we are both sewn up, but not stitched up. If we’d turned the corner onto Stoke Newington Church Street we would have had similar food at roughly double the price.
I urge you to check Dem out.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The Zetter, Clerkenwell
The Zetter
St John's Square
86-88 Clerkenwell Rd
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
020 7324 4444
www.thezetter.com
by Malcolm Eggs
A flight to Madrid, sixty-five fish fingers, a "Garden Dreamscape beading kit", 100ml of Panacur 10% (For Dogs), a full English breakfast at The Zetter. All these things cost £16.99. I'm no regular patron of lists such as this: it's all too easy to find oneself impaled on the horns of dilemmas such as 'dinner vs more wine'. Just spend as required and let Future Malcolm work it out - that's the key. But as Orva Easy and I emerged from The Zetter, a boutique hotel in the historic backlands of Clerkenwell, I found myself imagining a million different Malcolms - this one with his shampoo and pen knife, that one with his square foot of office space - and I had this horrible suspicion that nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them received better value for money than the one trying to get to the point in this review.
I knew it would be disappointing before the waitress even reached us - the light was good, I'll give them that - and the closer the ghoulish rashers that crowned the heap loomed, the worse my morning became. Cooked on one side only, they were rarer than a man campaigning to Save the Diplodocus. My first instinct was to dash for the solace of the poached egg, but its undercooked core of translucent goo would give me days of nasty flashbacks. The toast was cut from an excellent loaf but would buttering it have been impossible? Nondescript mushroom and tomato and a likeable (if dense) sausage could only try vainly to balance the books, because a breakfast this expensive should be a wonderful memory, not - at best - a boring anecdote.
St John's Square
86-88 Clerkenwell Rd
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
020 7324 4444
www.thezetter.com
by Malcolm Eggs
A flight to Madrid, sixty-five fish fingers, a "Garden Dreamscape beading kit", 100ml of Panacur 10% (For Dogs), a full English breakfast at The Zetter. All these things cost £16.99. I'm no regular patron of lists such as this: it's all too easy to find oneself impaled on the horns of dilemmas such as 'dinner vs more wine'. Just spend as required and let Future Malcolm work it out - that's the key. But as Orva Easy and I emerged from The Zetter, a boutique hotel in the historic backlands of Clerkenwell, I found myself imagining a million different Malcolms - this one with his shampoo and pen knife, that one with his square foot of office space - and I had this horrible suspicion that nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them received better value for money than the one trying to get to the point in this review.
I knew it would be disappointing before the waitress even reached us - the light was good, I'll give them that - and the closer the ghoulish rashers that crowned the heap loomed, the worse my morning became. Cooked on one side only, they were rarer than a man campaigning to Save the Diplodocus. My first instinct was to dash for the solace of the poached egg, but its undercooked core of translucent goo would give me days of nasty flashbacks. The toast was cut from an excellent loaf but would buttering it have been impossible? Nondescript mushroom and tomato and a likeable (if dense) sausage could only try vainly to balance the books, because a breakfast this expensive should be a wonderful memory, not - at best - a boring anecdote.
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