The Milk Bar

The Milk Bar is the sister coffee bar to Flat White, both are antiodean and both serve fantastic coffee, including a flat White. The Milk Bar is on Bateman street in soho and is small and generally busy with wooden tables and funky staff. As well as coffee they serve
lunch and brunch including a very good plate of scrambled eggs, which was just the right creamy consistency and a vegan carrot cake crammed with pumpkin seeds. Vegan cake is never as good as non vegan cake but this was a pretty good attempt. Lunch was £15 for 2 coffees, 2 scrambled eggs on toast and one piece of cake. Recommended.

Costa Coffee, Heathrow Airport, Terminal 4

We were saying goodbye to my Step son and his wife as they were emigrating to Israel and obviously after all that emotion, blended family dynamics etc, we were hungry. Terminal 4 is very small, Heathrow Airport is a food desert and the outlook was not promising. Costa Coffee was bascially the only option apart from a Wetherspoons pub, which isn't really an option at all.

So, since I am now reviewign pretty much everything I eat outside of the house (althoug there is a lot to catch up on) here it is: the egg sandwich was pretty decent, no foliage just egg and mayo on soft brown bread. A slice of carrot cake was large, sweet and sticky, and the coffee is only really drinkable if youhave an extra shot. Pretty basic but not terrible, and apart from the fact they tried to put Vanilla syrup in my coffee, not a complete disaster at all.

The Market Coffee House

The Market Coffee House in Spitalfields is an old style cafe opposite Spitalfields Market. It is family owned and so has a little more character than many of the other chain establishments around this area. This character shows itself through the look of the place, all wooden furnture and nooks and crannies, including a lovel old tiled floor down in the basement where the loos are. The food itself sells itself as 'home made', freshly baked rolls with egg, sheese, ham etc, and an excellent bowl of hummus with a huge slice of bread. It is all fresh tasting and not too expensive (egg and cress roll £2.50). The cake counter is pretty irresistible, so far I recommend the banana cake, although it does have chocolate chips hidden in it which I count as a bonus but Joff sees as an ambush, and the individual bakewell tarts. the coffee is good and strong (I think they use Monmouth) and there is always somewhere to sit. I have only one quibble and that is the service; the servers themselves are all very decorative adn look as though they have been bought in bulk form an art School but there are a lot of them and it seems to take them a long time to do anything, which isn't helped by the fact that they all seem to do the same thing at once. No system! This doesn't ruin the place by any means and it is fast turning into my favourite lunch spot in the area. I read on their blog that they are opening a restaurant this year, which is good news.

Comptoir Libonais

Comptoir Libanais is a small chain of Lebanese cafe style restaurants, we visited the one in Wigmore Street but there is a branch in Westfield and one opening in Paddington soon. The food is available to eat in or take away and there is red bench style seating at the front and a few tables and chairs towards the back, the decor is chic and lively with black and white floor tiles and old Harissa tins to hold the cutlery. The staff are friendly, and even though the serving system is a little chaotic we were served fairly quickly.

The idea is that you queue at the front to choose the mostly pre-pepared dishes and order drinks and then carry it to your table, unless you order cooked food and then a waiter brings it. The food is mostly mezze with a few main dishes and everything that we ate was beautifully fresh and tasty. The tabouleh was drenched in lemon juice, the hummus smooth and made with good, flavoursome oil and the Pitta was crisp and freshly toasted. Joff had mint tea made with fresh mint and I had an apple, ginger and mint juice which looked murky but tasted delicious and refreshing. salads are 33.30 for a small and £5.50 for a large, mezze are £3.30 and wraps £4.50. All dishes are perfect for sharing, which makes it basically pretty reasonable price ways and there are a range of foodstuffs such as Turkish Delight and Harissa to buy on the way out. All in all it makes a nice change for lunch or a casual dinner and I will definitely be going back. Oh, and Jonathan Meades was there too, which is a good sign, I think.

The Breakfast Club Soho

The Breakfast Club is a bright yellow cafe on Poland street in Soho. Ther eis also a branc in Islington, but we visited the Soho one. It is named after the 80's film of the same name and of which I am very fond. The music also has a decidedly 80's feel, but in a good way.

Anyway, the food; they serve breakfast of course, at the weekend anyway and a few more lunchy things during the week. We had eggs, scrambled for Joff and fried for me. They also do pancakes, classic breakfasts, yoghurt and cereal, bagels and smoothies, toast etc.

The eggs were good, well I think the scrambled were good and mine were ok, but mostly because they both came with tomato chutney which I didn't pay a lot of attention to on the menu but which I couldn't avoid on the plate. The chutney had an incredibly overpowering vinegary smell that actually made my stomach lurch and I had to shove it to one side before I could tackle the egss. But that may be just me, Joff had no such problems, he didn't actually eat the cutney mind you but it didn't actually make him feel sick. Back to the eggs, they were nice enough (would have been better without chutney) and the toast was lovely thick slices of buttery granary. The coffee however was really very good, nice and strong and not too much milk. We had carrot cake to follow which was also excellent, actually tasted home made and the icing was delicious but not overpowering.

The eggs were £4.00 and the coffee £2.30, which is about right for Soho. The place has a good lively atmosphere, and the decor is laid back student style but without being too grungy. The clientele were youngish and trendy (not necessarily including us). I would go back and probably try the pancakes or the scrambled eggs, strictly no chutney, with lashings of coffee and carrot cake.

The Table

The Table is a cafe at the bottom of an architects office on Southwark street (just behind The Tate), so as you would expect it is all clean lines and natural wood. The food has all the usual credentials, locallly sourced organic etc, which are now less likely to make a place remarkable. However the food here is good, very good in fact.

I know it will come as no surprise when I say that we go there to have eggs. This could mean that we have a monotonous diet or that eggs are a good benchmark with which to measure most restuarants, take your pick. Anyway we had eggs. So far I have had fried and scrambled and Joff has had poached and scrambled. All were excellent, the yokes runny in the fried eggs and the scrambled were perfectly creamy but not too runny. The bread, from an award winning bakery, is sliced thickly and seemingly toasted on a griddle pan which gives it a smoky, almost burnt flavour. Lovely. The ccoffee is good and the service friendly. As far as puddings go I have only had a slice of banana bread which had a toffee ish consistency and was much nicer than it looked.

The eggs cost £4 and the coffee is how much it usually costs in this type of place, which means I have forgotten but it didn't make me shout so it can't have been a lot. They are open 7 - 5 weekdays and 9 - 3 on weekends.

Joe's kitchen

Joe's kitchen is an American diner style restaurant in borough, very close to the station. We go there mostly for convenience, it is nearish to the house and close to the gym, and it does eggs on toast and I like to eat eggs on toast for lunch at the weekend.

The atmosphere is warm and vibrant and the menu pretty much what you would expect:eggs, burgers, pancakes, breakfasts, french toast. The coffee is good and served in decent sized cups, the decor is self consciously 'homey', toys, books, cans of beans, jars of sweets on shelves, that kind of thing.

And now for the quibble, and it is a quibble rather than a reason not to go, because we do still keep going: the service. It is cheerful enough and solicitous enough but erratic doesn't come near to describing it. They take your order, the food is cooked and placed on the serving hatch (you can see through this to the kitchen) and there it sits, sometimes for what seems like 10 minutes. Waiting staff walk past it, sometimes even lean over it to talk to the kitchen staff, walk past it again, talk to other waiting staff, look at it, but only after an extraordinarily long time do they pick it up and bring it to you. This means it is often a little colder than it should be, although not quite as cold as it could be given the length of time it has been sitting there. It has now got to the point where I sit facing away from the kitchen, otherwise I become obsessed with watching the food sit on the hatch while people ignore it.

But we still keep coming back. This is because the food is actually fairly good, it is one of the few places near borough to eat (see previous posts Lunch in Borough Market 1 and 2) and because I am absurdly optimistic. The conclusiont to all this is that there is a market for good, simple lunch places in Borough and that if Joe's Kitchen got it's serving system sorted out it would be very good instead of ok.

EV at home

So, on New YEar's eve we decided not to go to the Real Greek after all (nothing personal). Instead Joff went to the deli at EV in Waterloo, EV is a chain of Turkish restaurants that includes Tas, and EV. The main restuarant is huge, set under the railway arches in Waterloo and does reasonably priced Turkish food, particularly good for vegetarians.

Next door is a bakery and delicatessen selling much of the food served in the restuaraunt as well as bags of dried fruit, beans, herbs etc. For our New YEar's Eve feast Joff bought hummus, tabouleh, peppers and aubergines in oil, slices of a cheese and spinach pie (like borek), turkish delight and baklava. delicious. We supplemented it with other things like more aubergine and falafel but it was dleicious and fresh, if filling.

Off to Giraffe, post cinema, later and will report back tomorrow.

Christmas and New Year

We ate in over Christmas and since I don't do any of the cooking I don't really feel like I can blog about it. Although I do a lot of the eating. For the record we had Lasagne (veg) and then a Japanese style dish with rice noodles and tofu. Very nice.

As for eating out, we haven't done much of that recently but are plannign to go to the Real Greek for New year's eve, which is a little random but it is on the river, close to home and they do Gigantes beans, how could we resist?

Also, plan to have lunch in the V & A on new year's day so will report back on that too.

Le Pain Quotidien

Le Pain Quotidien, which apparently means daily bread, is a Belgian chain consisting of a restaurant and bakery, based unsurprisingly around it's very high quality and correspondingly highly priced bread. The 'concept' is that there are long wooden tables in the centre of the restuarant around which everyone sits, ie you share a table. Although in the waterloo branch there are also a lot of smaller tables for the less european and more squeamish among us. The decor is all unvarnished wood and large wooden dressers selling jam and other such condiments.

I have never eaten an evening meal there so can only comment on what I have had, which is two boiled eggs, fresh bread soldiers and a very aesthetically pleasing paper wrapped french butter pat accompanied by a vat of lovely coffee served in a bowl. Joff has also only had the same, several times. Call us unadvertourous but we know what we like...and we are vegetarians which probably serves us right. Still, I have seen people eating all sorts of things there and they all seemed happy. Service is friendly and the clientele unreletingly middle class, I have never seen so many little boys in faux hand knitted sweaters in my life, except in chiswick.

I like it there. The coffee is excellent, the eggs are fresh, the bread is perfect: crusty, chewy and fresh. There is also something immensely satisfying about cupping a large white bowlful of coffee in your hands. It is of course absurdly expensive if you allow yourself to think about it, which I suppose in these crunchy times you should do, £4 for boiled eggs and £3 for a large coffee. But if spending money on good quality food is what you like to do and you can still afford to do it I recommend you do it here.

Trees for Cities

This is a late update but we completed the Treeathlon. It was a gorgeous day and there weren't too many runners which made for a relaxed atmosphere. Battersea Park is pretty and, importantly, flat. Joff ran with me this time so he coud be the pace person, I told him to keep an eye on the time as I wanted to do it in under 40 minutes adn then every time he looked at his watch I shouted that I was going as fast as I can and he could go on if he wanted. Which led me to the conclusion that I am a grumpy runner, I do not feel the wind in my hair and freedom driving me along, it feels like a hard slog, I look red and sweaty as opposed to lithe and athletic and it always feels like a long way. However, once finished I am excited enough that I didn't actually die doing it that it all seems worthwhile. In the end I managed to complete it in 34 and a bit minutes, which wasn't too bad, event though at one point I was being overtaken by some pretty elderly looking people.

And on to the food. We collected our Veggie brunches in their little brown paper bags, took them back to my mums, where we changed, and then promptly went out to lunch. Not that they didn't look nice but going out to lunch seemed like the thing to do. For the record the brunch consisted of a club sandwich with salad, egg and cheese. I think it was the egg and cheese that did it, I don't really see the point of egg and cheese, it's a bit like having pizza and chips. We went to Coffee Republic on the Kings road and had bagels, which they make at the counter and which were fresh and suitably chewy. The coffe there is good and strong, the surroundings seem a little faded but this meant there was room to sit down. I prefer the coffee here to most of the other coffee chains, except perhaps Cafe Nero, and you could do a lot worse than lunch on one of their bagels.

The National Gallery cafe

The National Cafe is the Peyton and Byrne venture inside the National Gallery, it has been there for a year or perhaps more but I visited for the first time last week. It is beautifully designed, a little like having a slap up lunch in a library or the dining room in an old country house. We visited the cafe, which is attached to the brasserie, which also looks good and may warrant a visit soon.

The centre piece of the cafe is a large dresser like table covered in cakes and pastries from which you help yourself, using a pleasingly old fashioned cake slice. The cakes are all homemade looking and unimpeded by wrapping of any sort, so the effect is that of visiting an enthusiastic Aunt's house for tea and being invited to help yourself to whatever you want, which cleverly allows you to forget you will actually have to pay for it when you reach the counter. The sandwiches are fresh and made with good dense bread, I had pitta bread, hummus and tomato and onion salad, all of which was lovely, the hummus tasting pleasingly tahini filled.

Once you have loaded your plates with cake and paid you can either sit at a table or perch on a stool at a bar which gives you a surprisingly entertaining view of the cake stand and allows you to watch other people loading their plates with cake. All in all it was a pleasing experience and I have already chosen three more types of cake to try which means I will need to go back at least three more times (the giant fig rolls look particularly exciting).

Hummus Galore

Hummus Brothers is, unsurprisingly, a Hummus restaurant/cafe run by two brothers. I remember it opening on Wardour street and thinking, although I adore hummus, that it would never last, the menu would be too limiting and you can just buy a tub from the supermarket surely. How wrong I was. They have just opened their second branch in Holborn and deliver across the west end. I have passed it many times and it is always busy so last Saturday, after visiting Bar Italia, we decided to try it out, although it had clearly already proved itself a success.

It is a concept restaurant in so much as you chose a bowl, small or large, choose a topping to go on the hummus and a side dish if you want one. This is all explained by a cheerful waitress and service generally is quick and friendly. I had cherry tomatoes, onion and cucumber salad as a topping and Joff had tabbouleh and a hard boiled egg. The egg was an extremely strange colour but this didn't deter him and we both tucked in. It was good. And filling. The hummus was a nice consistency and you could taste the tahini, garlic and lemon sauce is served on the side for those who are squeamish about such things. It makes a decent alternative to a sandwich and would make a good, quick dinner before a film or show. You can add more sides to make it more substantial or go for a bigger bowl. It cost about £15 for two with two large glasses of apple juice. It is more or less opposite Just Falafs and has mostly shared seating but with more of a restaurant feel than the falafel bar.

Running 10k

Last Sunday we ran the British 10k. It was my first public run, unless you count slogging along the road occasionally or running on the treadmill at the gym, and I actually enjoyed it. It took me 1hr 15 minutes and I was stained a deep reddish purple but there is something exhilarating about being involved in large public events, as well as being able to run in the road past several key London landmarks. I may well do one again and it hasn't stopped me running at the gym so there must be something about it I like...afterwards we went here and ate chips.

Lunch in borough Market part 3

We were again searching for somewhere to eat in Borough (had just been to the gym) and were marching down Borough high street towards Joe's Kitchen (more of this in another post). Walking past Taz, a good chain of Turkish restaurants, we noticed Taz cafe next door, empty- ish and inviting enough so we went in. They serve sandwiches with slightly off the wall fillings (Leek, spinach and yoghurt plus feta, olives and mint) as well as traditional Turkish pastries stuffed with cheese and spinach, falafel wraps and fresh looking salad plates. Service was friendly enough, the price was reasonable and the food good. I will definitely add this to the everso slightly expanding list of places to sit and eat in Borough. Oh and we had a piece of Baklava too which was fresh, buttery and dripping with honey... delicious.

Just Falafs

is a falafel cafe in wardour street, sort of like Maoz but a little more upmarket,eg it has proper seating. You can choose between a 1,2 or 3 ball wrap (sounds alarming but is very tasty) and then have a choice of sauces, salads and relishes. It is good value for money, a 1 ball wrap costs abotu £2.50 and is much larger than you might expect. We arrived there having bickered our way around soho looking for the perfect lunchspot, having failed, and feeling tired, hungry and ratty, I led us into just falafs as a sort of last resort and was pleasantly surprised. We left feeling full up and happy. I would definitely go back.

Eggs VW style

Having just come back from Dresden where we did a lot of eating I am now deviating from the London theme but sticking to the food theme. Hungry and looking for lunch on the one rainy day we had, we wandered into the famous (in Dresden) transparent VW car factory to look at the restaurant of ocurse and managed miraculously to get an egg sandwich. We had to ask for them to take out the ham and the cheese but eventually managed to get a delicious and pretty sandwich, my first in a car factory. We left without paying much attention to the cars but did admire all the glass and design (and the loos). If you are ever in Dresden and in need of an egg sandwich then the vW factory is the place to go.

Royal Festival Hall

Company of Cooks have installed themselves in the terrace cafe area at the Royal Festival Hall and have made it an excellent place for lunch. There is plenty of space, much of it with a riverside view, and the place has a light and airy feel to it. It is not really a formal lunching kind of place but a good lazy Sunday or
Saturday destination. Excellent sandwiches on good, dense, seedy bread or focaccia with hummus and roasted courgettes. The cake is excellent and unusual, including a lavender cake with a wonderfully subtle flavour or, for Easter, a good rich, fruity simnel cake with generous amounts of marzipan. They also do seasonal salads and soups. Well made coffee and quick service make it one of my current favourites.

Lunch in Borough Market pt 2

So it is true that it is difficult to sit down and eat lunch in Borough Market, a lot of standing up and shovelling down meat filled rolls goes on. Which is all well and good but we were looking for somewhere to sit and chat and recover from the rain. We tried the French Patisserie but were told we couldn't just have coffee but that we all had to eat, 'It is a patisserie' we were told rather snootily. So we decamped to shipp's tearooms and were welcomed with open arms, even told that they only did tea but we were welcome to go and buy a coffee and bring it in! Needless to say we didn't, we all had tea, served in retro little tea pots with floral china on freshly laundered table linen. It was fantastic and old fashioned but quite clearly styled that way, with china cups suspended from the ceiling and girls with rose bud complexions serving. Service was friendly, tea was delicious and the cakes were moist, buttery and everything that we hoped they would be. This all does not come cheaply, but then you are in Borough market so presumably you have already left your financial sense at the gates. I can't say exactly how much it cost because my Aunt kindly paid, but I did notice that she had to reach into her purse for an extra note when the bill came. However it is a great place, friendly, tasty, and extrememly well dressed.

Lunch in Borough Market

is actually farily tricky if you don't want ot eat standing up, outside or in a pub. I may be picky but all I ask for is a nice sandwich, good coffee, fine cake and a seat to sit on with a roof over my head. I realise space is at a premium but I would pay extra on top of the extra I am already paying just to be able to sit in at, for example, Konditor and Cook. Anyway I am off there to meet my mother and aunt and to pick up some bread at DeGustibus. Will report back...