Good Honest Cafes!

I haven't posted a breakfast review for a while and since it says that this blog is about 'breakfasts, libraries and london' I'd better do one!

The Workman's Inn Cafe, 147 Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park - nothing to look at but does good, cheap and honest food. I used to work in the library around the corner, until they closed it down (it's not a new thing!), and frequented this cafe some 15 years ago.

Mushroom omelette, chips, beans, 2 slice and a tea = £4.40. Served on a large oval plate, they didn't have to use this device to make the portion look big it was big!

Cafe Delight, 351 Green Lanes, N4 - a welcoming, bright and clean cafe with a very friendly chef/owner. I reckon that this is the best cafe in the area and i use it regularly.

Mushroom omelette, chips, beans, 2 slice and a tea = £4.90. One of the best mushroom omelettes i have tasted in a cafe! And i hear you say "What can go wrong with a mushroom omelette?", well let me tell you i have had some stinkers!

Bexley or bust!!!

Ventured into deepest darkest south-east London recently to do the 'Cray Riverway' walk, 10.5 miles from Foots Cray Meadows to Erith on the Thames.

It was a lovely day and the walk was flat and easy.

An hour into the walk I stopped to have breakfast in Old Bexley Village, no bubble on the menu but I did have a passable veggie breakfast. Old Bexley has a nice old fashioned High Street and a lovely church and church yard.

From here the walk led to Crayford, 'the land that time forgot!!' and then on to Crayford and Dartford Marshes, the River Darent, and Erith on the Thames, which looked quite spectacular with the 'Queen Elizabeth II' bridge in the background. Can't say much for Erith, depressing and full of scaffolders!!!

Cafe Musac

"any recorded background music; (more widely) light, bland music of a kind regarded as easy to listen to, whether recorded or live" OED Definition

No! Cafe Musac is not another new Hampstead eating establishment, but refers to the incessant stream of drivel that is played in most cafes nowadays.
All I want to do in the morning, before tackling the horny beast 'work' is to sit quietly in my local cafe, eat my usually mediocre breakfast and struggle with the Guardian crossword, not have 'House' music or some moronic radio presenter booming in my ear.
We are bombarded by noise pollution everywhere we go, is nothing sacred?

The healthy Scottish breakfast!

My brother is in Edinburgh, well Portobello to be precise, and is scathing about his B&B's full Scottish breakfast, "swimming in grease" was one of his comments. He also says that Edinburgh etc is incredibly expensive for eating out, everything is geared towards the tourist industry.

So in the interest of scientific research I googled 'Scottish Breakfasts' and up popped the picture on the left. What the hell are slices of orange doing on the plate, is this an effort to try and make it healthier?

Do you want bacon with your vegetarian breakfast?

Having braved the pea-souper that hung over London on Sunday morning, I ventured along the rubbish strewn streets of Harringay looking for a cafe that was open at 8.30 am. Unfortunately I found the Corner Cafe and Deli on Green Lanes.

I ordered a Set7 which was one of the veggie breakfasts on offer, egg, beans, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms, 2 toast and a tea, all for the princely sum of £4.50. I was going to try the bubble but decided against it, mainly because it was spelt 'buble' on the menu!

The breakfast came a little too quickly for my liking, but looked adequate untill I noticed that hiding under the beans were two rashers of bacon. I called the waitress over and pointed the mistake out to her, she said that she would remove the bacon and give me the breakfast back. I responded that I didn't want to eat the breakfast as it had been contaminated with bacon residue and asked for a newly cooked breakfast. This caused a lot of discussion between her and the cook and after much head scratching, and 10 minutes, another Set7 arrived. There was no apology or refund offered.

All in all a very poor experience and one I definitely wouldn't recommend.

Bubble the same colour as the walls!

Recently I had what I can only describe as the worst breakfast I have ever had, which is quite an achievement as I must have had thousands.
This award goes to the 'Arsenal Cafe', 25 Blackstock Road, N4.
I had 2 eggs, bubble, mushrooms, tomatoes, 2 toast and a tea, £4.60 for the lot. Lets start with the bubble which consisted of fried mashed potatoes, peas, diced carrot and onions, it was a lurid bright green colour, which incidentally matched the colour of the walls. The eggs weren't cooked properly, the whites were still runny and the 'fried' tomatoes were raw.
I mentioned these shortcomings to the young waitress and she shrugged her shoulders and said that she didn't see what the problem was, even though I had left nearly all of it uneaten on the plate. I paid up and gladly left.
What a miserable experience!

Dodgy Deptford!

Deptford used to be one those places in London that was stuck between other places of interest, a hinterland, somewere that you passed through. But now I must admit it is one of the areas that I visit quite reguarly. There's a bustling market and some interesting new cafes and bars , there are also some very old fashioned boozers, like throw backs to the 70's, drunk old men and carpet on the floor, which is no bad thing in this age of gastropubs.
Anyway on one of my recent visits I popped into the Deptford Cafe, one of the many in the market, for sustenance. I had my usual, bubble, eggs, beans, 2 slice and a tea. The bubble was by far one of the worst I have ever tasted, fried packet mashed potato, with no cabbage, onion, no nothing! In fact it was like eating burnt wallpaper paste. The bread was economy class and on it was the normal industrial spread we have come to expect in most cafes.
The only redeeming feature of the place was the clientele, a curious mixture of local characters, one woman's false teeth fell out of her mouth and into her tea, how quaint!

Armin's Arse Rippers!!!

On one of my rare forays outside of London, last weekend I went to Whitstable for their Oyster Festival. What a brilliant place and a great festival. The seafood and fish was some of the best that I have tasted and the beer, produced by the Whitstable Brewery Company, was excellent.

Whitstable is also home to the 'Ship Centurion Arminus', a wonderful pub, run by a loud and charasmatic German named Armin. They have Bitburger, Erdinger and Dark Budvar on tap, aswell as a good selection for the CAMRA lot!, and chilli pickled eggs nicknamed 'Armin's Arse Rippers'. What more can I say!!

I stayed at the Duke of Cumberland, an imposing victorian pub slap bang in the middle of the high street. The room was nice and the view even better, but the breakfast left something to be desired. I had the veggie option, which consisted of 3 small veggie sausages, 2 eggs, 6 mushrooms and a small grilled tomato. The sausages were overcooked to the point of being crunchy!

French Toast during the Renaissance

The best quote about breakfast, in my opinion, was by the American comedian Steven Wright.

"I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast at any time'. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance."