I've done Bar Bruno before, but I was passing and couldn't resist trying out the egg, bacon, chips and beans. And I saw, and it was good. Crispy little chips and a triangular egg. Formidable! A big pile of bacon and a mass of beans with a splendid smear of juice up the side of the plate. And all piping hot.
It's a magnificent place. Tardis-like. Splendid location. Great graphics. Full on Italian banter at all times of the day and night.
A minimalist condiment approach. A touch of John Pawson.
Big fan of the high-up menu board. Love to watch people coming in unsure of what they want, peering up at the board, realising they can't really read it and they're keeping everyone waiting and ordering something random in a panic.
Superb green leathery seats - especially the one v one configuration. Perfect for solo paper reading.
Heaven.
And here's ten minutes of random audio, recorded one monday morning
Platial place
No, this is not me eating by a mirror. This is two ebcb's on one table. Marvelous. A good egg - very white and very yellow. Deep, rich beans. Loads of chips, some of them very small, almost nano-chips. Super soggy bacon with a hint of carbonisation. And my companion pronounced the ebcb excellent.
And it's a fantastic place. Great signage and the loveliest people. And those lace curtains are special. Give it a 50s homeliness you can't resist. More and better pictures here.
The colours inside are fantastic. Glowing with imperial optimism.
The curtains again. They make you feel like all's right with the world. Like the Old King will go on forever and the British will be first on the moon.
And the condiments are textbook. Look at the size of that salt cellar. There's probably Dickensian salt in there.
I've talked about the Sandwich Bar before, but I was in the area so I had to try the ebcb. And it doesn't disappoint. Big, gorgeous chips like bars of Pharoh's gold and succulent beans, almost over the edge of the plate. And an egg with the merest hint of yellow. The bacon; fat and juicey and good. And look, I managed to get those tea dribbles down my mug which speak of the bounty of overfilling.
A tiny front door belies the size inside. It's not quite the TARDIS. More a big room with a small door. Marvelous sign though. Beautiful plumage.
You look past the tables and into the store-room. Looks rather sparse, it says efficiency to me.
No-one in here really looks happy, but they are. They're happy in a face full of food, Daily Mirror crossword, not got to go back to work for fourty minutes, kind of way.
An area of outstanding utility. Stuff gets done here.
Ah, the Euston Sandwich Bar, I've been meaning to visit for ages but was spurred into activity by a suggestion from visitor Steve Hill. It's on the North side of the Euston Road, near Great Portland Street tube. A tiny little place but always bustling and friendly. And always a welcoming glow in the Euston Road bleakness.
The ebcb is faultless - look at the aesthetics, nicely reduced beans, those modern crunchy chips which really absorb the bean juice, and a beautiful pale egg. And the bacon is hugely flavourful - it tastes fresh off the pig.
The signs are great. Really classic and clean - again a welcome contrast to the corporate wasteland around there. (Though the chess shop across the road is always worth a visit.)
Simple condiment display. And isn't that the best sugar dispenser? I can't be doing with those spouty ones. They don't give you enough control.
I didn't get great photos inside, I was stuck round the corner, but it's got great tables and counters and those magnificent orange plastic seats bolted to metal frames. You can't have customers moving themselves around when you've not got a lot of space.
At lunchtime there are huge queues of people getting a sandwich to take back to their desk. But you can always find a seat, even if you have to sit next to someone else. Anne and I were sitting there yesterday, planning our future, sat next to a bloke chatting on his mobile earpiece thing about this gruesome operation he was about to have. The perfect cafe experience.
Lovely tables. Lovely white crockery.
They're open to 6.30. And everything's free.
See the seats? That's how to run a well-ordered cafe.
Bar Remo is a magnificent place, around the back of Oxford Circus. Handy for the Regent Street Apple store. It's huge inside, bigger than it looks. Mostly very Italian - pasta and sandwiches and stuff. And large hams hanging from the ceiling.
But they do a magnificent egg, bacon, chips and beans. Corpulent chips, pink, curly bacon, and an avalanche of beans sliding over the eggy island. Or something. Anyway, it's very nice.
Classic condiment line-up. Simple. Effective.
One of those splendidly ornate decors. Lots of vaguely Romanesque/Medieval/Tyorlean thingys around the place.
And, because it's very close to lots of theatres, tons of slightly faded pictures of slightly faded celebs. I've always wondered how this works. Do faded celebs always carry glossy photos around with themselves? If I did that, would they put my picture up?
More faded celebs. Some bottles of wine on the wall.
It seems that this site has been nominated as one of the 'Yahoo! Finds Of The Year'. Which is nice. And if you click here you can vote for me to win the overall thing. And if you did that I'd be your best friend.
So for all the visitors from Yahoo maybe I should explain what this page is all about.
It started as a page about my personal obsession with the traditional British fry-up - specifically egg, bacon, chips and beans. Which is what I always order. But it (along with my other site agoodplaceforacupofteaandathink.com) has also become a way of documenting a quickly disappearing slice of British culture - the traditional cafe. And it's become a place where people are discussing the idea of a Cafe Preservation Society. (See here and here ). (And if you want to see more great cafes then hi yourself hither, hither, hither and, of course, thither.
For everyone who's been talking about the Cafe Preservation thing. This is what I'd suggest should happen next.
I had a cup of tea a while back with Adrian Maddox (creator of classic cafes and author of the definitive classic cafes book). He's become the authority on this stuff so it'd be great to have him involved. He seems keen to do something, but clearly has lots of his own irons in the fire and they're keeping him busy. (And he probably thinks I'm a wimpy corporate apologist. Which is fair.)
But anyway, I think we should just plough on with something. At least move the conversation off the internet and into a cafe. So who's up for a cup of tea somewhere central? (if we made it the New Piccadilly maybe Adrian would come) How about one evening at the end of Feb? We could meet up, chat, work out what we want to do. And then report back to everyone not in Central London.
Thoughts?
Dino's Grill is just down from Spitalfield's Market and Brick Lane and is hence open on a Sunday morning. Which is a boon.
A visually thrilling egg, bacon, chips and beans which was a slight culinary let-down. Just a one-off, I'm sure. I was offered a choice of chips and went for 'fat ones' - so I'm excited to see the thin ones. The bacon looked lovely but was a bit cold and undercooked. Also the beans. I found redemption in the egg though. Gold and white like a high-quality medallion resting against a dress shirt.
Classic condiment cluster. Except...where's the brown? I had to hustle to an adjacent table to collect a spare.
Gorgeous booths.
A faultless display of symetrical ashtray placement.
Muratori is very near Mount Pleasant Post Office depot and is consequently often full of posties. A crowd that guarantees quality fry-age.
I'm surprised there aren't more oval plates in the world. Oval has just the right contours to incorporate the ebcb. Lovely chips here - yellow and fat. Nice egg, with a watery yoke just beneath the white - like a pale sun rising in the mist. Good slabs of bacon and generous beans.
Comprehensive condiment cluster.
Good boothy, benchy things.
