eggbaconchipsandbeans

Grange Cafe, Grange Road, Bermondsey SE1

Nigel suggested this place and he describes it perfectly:

"I couldn't find this gem on your site so I thought I'd tell you about it. The Grange Cafe, 188 Grange Road, Bermondsey. This is a completely unspoiled builders' caff that happens to be on my street. Authentic screwed-in plastic bucket chairs, formica tables, sergeant majors' tea served from a pot, and everyone's favourite revivifying breakfast food (eggs, bacon, chips and beans) for £4.10 (two eggs, two slices, all on a massive oval plate). There's also a fruit machine in there that, it is rumoured, only the owner, a taciturn and gruff man called George, ever plays. Service is quick, and there's a selection of red tops to read as you scoff, although reading the Guardian is tolerated."

The plates are huge. It's hard to convey how huge, but look at it next to that knife and fork. Lots of lovely, lovely bacon, pink and soft and meaty. The chips and more your fry types; thin, golden, pale, soft and crunchy. The egg swims in the bean juice, poking up like a volcano. All high quality and tasty.

Beautiful looking condiments. There's something in the light that gives them an oil-painting quality. The simple forms help with the still-life-ness, the mustard label adding a visual focus. Or something.

Surely these tables and chairs are design classics by now. Is there some committee we can talk to about getting them registered with a design museum or interiors magazine?

Nice big bright yellow menuboards. And, though you can't see them in these pictures, there's some good historical pictures and letters from  people who ran the cafe in previous years.

And a very respectable cup of tea too.

fast food, fast book

Kevin Jackson has written this splendid book - Fast: Feasting On The Streets Of London. (the image above is from the book, off of Amazon).  Portobello books were kind enough to send me a copy.

It's splendidly enthusiastic about all the brilliant varieties of Fast Food you can get in London from kebabs to eels. (Though it's predictably sniffy about the corporate varieties.) It's dense with all the little facts you want to know about the histories of London's coffee houses, Milk Bars and chip shops. It has a nice line in mixing the trivial anecdote with the heavyweight academic reference and I really like the photography. You really get a sense of an author who likes what he's writing about, which meant I powered through it in an evening, using little sticky notes to mark all the places I'm very keen to visit. Top stuff.

Windy Ridge, Ashbourne Road, Winkhill, nr Leek

Here's an interesting example of what's actually happening to British cafes. A big chain - Little Chef - is kind of in trouble and is selling off loads of its sites. And they're being converted into brilliant, independent cafes, often by the people who used to work there before. It doesn't quite fit with the conventional wisdom of trad cafes being driven off by global business, but it's something you can see all over the country. This place, Windy Ridge, is a great example.

The ebcb is second to none. Look at all the textures on that egg. So many colours, shapes and dimensions. And lovely, nice fat chips - exactly halfway between crunchy and soft. Lots of bacon, which also covers the bases from light to dark. But, hang on a minute, where are the beans?  Oh there they are, lurking under the egg, like a marvelous surprise.

There's no disguising the Little Chef origins (and why would you want to?) but there's not been time for a really unique character to emerge in the decor yet.

But then you have a look at the menu and you start to get hints that before long, along with the scrummy grub, this is going to be a really interesting, really individual place.

Look at the magnificent stag to start with, they're injecting a gentlemen's club vibe into the shell of a Little Chef. Genius.

And this is a good sign too. Creating enormous set meals is a great sign of character in a cafe.

And these are just cute. Hurrah fo the Windy Ridge. I'm really looking forward to watching the quirks and charms emerge.

River Cafe, Putney Bridge, SW6

River cafe is a much-appreciated classic. It's like a slice of Boulting Brothers or the world of Galton and Simpson. Run with care and love by a fantastic Italian family.

The ebcb is delightful. Plump, stumpy chips. The egg nestling between bacon and chips, like the VIP area at Live8. The beans forming a more informal culinary moshpit.

Simple condiment set-up. Basic colours, complimentary, like a colour wheel from a fashionable tile company.

And those tiles are brilliant. You could spend a productive thirty minutes just staring at them, working out the pattern permutations, imagining little mazes.

Lovely tables too. Is it formica? I don't know. I'm never really sure what formica actually is, but they're lovely. And make you think you should start talking like Tony Hancock.

The interior is all shiney tiles, patinaed wood and fading Juventas posters. I could live here.

This place is genius. And it's right opposite the tube. Get yourself down there. Spend some time in a heavenly timewarp.

no comment

I'm off to Wales for holidays for a week, and hopefully finding some lovely cafes. Since I've been getting a bit of comment spam recently I'm going to turn comments off for a week. Sorry about that. Back soon. Talk amongst yourselves.