eggbaconchipsandbeans

Tony's Snack Bar, Chapter Street, SW1

Just around the corner from The Regency is a modest little place called Tony's Snack Bar. Which turns out to be perfect once you pop in for a quick fry-up.

A textbook ebcb; the chips are pale, interesting and sprawling over the beans, the bacon has that irresistible combination of soggy and crisp, the egg offers a multitude of heavenly textures, the beans  are breaking out of their compound like feisty stallions. Delicious.

Brilliantly simple condiments. Just your basics. No flim-flam. No flummery. Clean lines. Iconic shapes.  Like baroque never happened.

These booths are clean and perfect. The ideal place for an assignation, a gossip or a solo read of the paper. There's this friendly, family mood to the place. When I was there it started off lovely, empty and contemplative. Then the lunchtime crowd poured in - school-kids, office-workers - and it got lively and loud. Then, almost instantly, it got quiet again and I got my head stuck back in the paper. All in the space of about half an hour. Brilliant.

It's always nice to find a menu which actually offers egg, bacon, chips and beans, in that order. Like my choice isn't that unusual.

But this sign is the icing on a perfect cake. And it doesn't over-promise. They give you fine food and quick service. A magnificent place.

platial place

just in case anyone's interested

I just did an interview with the BBC Radio Wales Mousemat programme, mainly about the blog.  It's on at 5 on Sunday. And I believe you can listen online.

We're off to Anglesey for our holidays the week after next and they're promising to let me know some good cafes I can visit. Anyone else have any suggestions?

audio breakfast III

I've met a bunch of journalists on doing the publicity rounds for the book and the blooker prize. But no-one who seemed to get things like Chris Vallance of BBC 5 Live. His obvious enthusiasm and smarts also got me looking at his podcast Pocket Planet Radio, which is well worth checking out.

He actually seemed to understand the idea that there's not some natural progression from blog to book, that one is not naturally of a higher order than the other. And that the two can feed off and reinforce each other. Obviously it's nice to have done a book, but if I'd had to choose, I think I'd choose blog over book.

Anyway, for the record, here's the interview he did with me for Pods and Blogs on 5 Live - lulublooker.mp3 4.6MB

Tiffany's, North Road, Brighton

Tiffany's on North Road, Brighton has been suggested by a few correspondents, so we made a pilgrimage this weekend and it didn't disappoint. A splendid place. And I like the exterior, I like the way a cafe with a few owners over the years becomes a kind of history of typography.

The chips are very yellow. Almost dayglo. And crispy and delicious. The bacon, also crispy and delicious, but dark and brooding. A highly textured egg and a balancing sea of beans. A nice compact ebcb - pensioner size I'd say.

A simple condiment arrangement. I like the slight hint of translucency to the ketchup.

You look this way and you'd think one kind of cafe - traditional, solid, working-class, no-nonsense.

You look this way and you think a different kind of cafe; bohemian, young, going-out kind of people, buyers of fancy furniture, lots of nonsense. I like those contrasts in a cafe, seems very Brighton.

It's all about the type.

It's also very Brighton that they have to offer, and point out that they offer, a vegetarian option.

Buscot Dairy Cafe, 44A Harrowby Street, W1

Christopher emailed me and suggested this place, and I'm very glad he did. It's fantastic. A proper working cafe with a high proportion of cabbies and high-viz jackets, but also bright, clean and airy.

Some ebcbs are all about boundaries, there are clear lines of demarkation between the different food groups. And some ebcbs are all about co-mingling, about the blending of the flavours and colours. This is one of those. The chips are golden and delicious, the egg is somehow simultaneously fluffy and soggy, which makes it marvelous, the beans are aligned like iron filings to a magnet and the bacon's comforting arms hold the whole thing together.

The infinite variety of cafe ordering systems always appeal to me. There's a fairly straightforward ticketing approach here. I'm always tempted to keep these things, start a collection, but they sit in my pocket for a few weeks and then get thrown out.

You can't beat those dayglo yellow starburst things for writing menu items on. I bought a pack from a catering shop once because I thought I could use them to lend a sense of urgency to my todo list. But I've not got around to todoing it yet.

Every cafe now seems to come with some copies of The Metro. It's one of the things I love about cafes, that sense of communal property, someone brings a paper, everyone gets to read it. It's like a socialist utopia. Well, not quite. But it's still a good thing.