Jenny from the (concrete) block

I have a long running love affair with the Elephant and Castle stretching back to my late teens/early twenties, when I remember being in a friend's car, driving around the iconic roundabout late on a Friday night. The lights, the chaos, the concrete. A few years later Stealth moved in to a flat just off the Walworth Road and it quickly became one of my very favourite places. Anywhere.

The shopping centre, particularly, is an area that's often been maligned. I would say unfairly, but, as much as I adore coming out of the Bakerloo line tube station on a Friday night, and seeing the majesty of the Faraday memorial in front of me, looking to the left at the rain-streaked adverts for the bingo and the bowling pasted to the blue plastic cladding panels, I'm not sure that even I really think that's true.

Which is why I'm conflicted that the green light has finally been given to bulldoze the shopping centre to the ground. While proposals from Delancy building nearly a thousand new homes and creating a new university campus, there is an uneasiness that lack of affordable housing and the removal of many independent businesses will help hasten the social cleansing that has all ready irrecoverably changed the character of the area. With many people who have lived and worked in E&C pushed further into London's peripheries and much of the areas unique character lost.

Due to a very complicated arrangement that only could have been contrived by Stealth, on our last visit we had to be out of the flat at 9.30 on a Sunday morning. For two hours. As she had roused me early from my bed on Christmas Eve eve, I decided to extract my sweet revenge by insisting we all went for breakfast. In the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. 

Jenny's Burgers, tucked away in a corner on the first floor, remains curiously untouched by the 21st century speeding past just outside it's door. A relic from a time past there's a pane of glass in the window held together with hazard tape, a fruit machine, peppered with cigarette burns, by the counter and the interior decorated with Day-Glo pictures of the menu that have been printed out and carefully backed on sugar paper. There was also a little sprinkling of tinsel around the mirrors on our visit, to really ramp up the festive cheer.

Jenny's offers the JJ Burger, which appears very similar to Wimpy's - another iconic piece of British life that is slowly disappearing - bender in a bun. With it's curled frankfurter sitting atop a beefburger, I can't say I wasn't tempted, especially at £3.40 including chips, but it was even harder to pass up a fry up. And with the two guys behind the counter exuding a wealth of warmth and experience to all comers, I felt we were going to be in good hands.

You couldn't have a fry up with out a good cup of splosh, creosote-coloured and so strong the spoon stands up in it. As the Ewing and Stealth are fancy, they had a giant cappuccino and a gallon of black coffee, respectively. Alas, being extra caffeinated didn't help with the quality of the conversation much (although I must be fair and note the Stealth didn't try to read the Sunday Times on her iPad once).

I had chips almost solely to annoy Stealth, because of her mistaken belief they don't belong with breakfast. Although they were cut thin enough to be verging on fries, and a little wan, they tasted pretty good, and even better with a good squirt of abrasively vinegary ketchup. The sausage was comfortingly cheap and paste-like, just as it should be. 

Toast was white sliced (the Ewing, as she always does, ignored the sanctity of the completely refined fry up and went brown), with butter already melted. I added my beans, and a few errant chips, to mine for DIY triple carbs on toast.

While I'm reluctant to think good things about the changes that are going to befall this vibrant patch of South London in the coming months, I'm hoping provisions will be made for those who chose to make this their home and the unique character is (mostly) preserved. But for now, I was more than happy to see the annual outing of the Christmas lights around the iconic elephant that stands proudly outside the centre. Let's hope it's not the last time.

Big Easy like Sunday afternoon

As the #brutaltour rumbles to its concrety conclusion (fear not, the promised round up is coming in the New Year), one of the best things about it - apart from all the wonderfully hulking buildings - is the chance to see some erstwhile unexplored corners of town. And a Sunday visit to look at the brilliant red brick of the World's End Estate in Chelsea meant I could finally take the Ewing to the original branch of the Big Easy, stalwart of the Kings Road, for their bottomless Sunday brunch.

As well as the lure of limitless (with a few, sensible, caveats) alcohol, they also offer the option of the 'pig gig' - limitless barbecued meat and sides - or the 'lobster festival' - a pound of lobster served in the shell with lashings of garlic butter; mixed with mayo and stuffed in a fluffy brioche bun, or chopped up and baked with macaroni cheese.

After a frustratingly thirsty pause after being seated, we finally started with a glass of bubbles - Big Easy brew, house wine and frozen mojito slushies are also available with  brunch, and can be mix and matched throughout you meal for maximum hangover potential.

Interior wise it's a comforting sort of mishmash, reminding me of somewhere between the original Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge, where my parents used to take us for a special treat back in the 80s, and a cosy French bistro; albeit one with a pig mural painted over the walls.

Ordering the Pig Gig brought a tray of barbecue chicken, baby back ribs, slaw pit beans, fries and fresh cornbread muffins. Like the decor, the food reminded me of meals from my childhood; soft meat bathed in a sticky sweet sauce. Authentic 'cue? Probably not, but still pretty tasty in a pleasingly nostalgic way and I managed two portions (with a little help from a friend).

Slaw (we seem to have lost the 'cole' since I was a kid) and beans were decent, but the fries were more like chunky oven chips. A childhood staple I'm not so wistful about. Best of the sides was the sweet, crumbly muffin; like having pudding with your dinner. The perks of being an adult.

The Ewing chose the lobster - she pimped it to a pound and three quarter specimen for an extra fiver - served with fries, although ours failed to materialise, and a side salad. A decent specimen, if a touch woolly, that involved much concentrated cracking to extract every morsel of crustacean. All while I attempted a one-sided conversation across the table. A standard Sunday, really.

Earlier in the afternoon, as we sat down at the table, the Ewing noted the sheer number of the fuse boxes and control panels on the wall, with their alarming number of buttons and wires. A prescient comment as, just as we were finishing our food, the fire alarm started up, followed five minutes later by two trucks (by half the crew of the Chelsea fire station. 

Throughout the thrilling episode we continued to doggedly munch on our remaining ribs - reasoning we were close enough to the window to make a quick escape should we see actual flames - and it was faintly reassuring to see that the guys in flouro stripes looked initially as bamboozled at the proliferation of switches and dials as we had, even if they were soon quick to identify and fix the fault (and get a round of applause for doing so, well done them - TE).

It was at this point - with the alarm still blaring but now with a bit of added eye candy, to distract us - the cocktails began to flow much quicker, and unbidden, from the bar. During one overlap between rounds I even managed to top off my frozen mojito with proscecco. Praise be for welcome distractions (and multiple alcoholic drinks dispensed from a slushy machine).

Multiple mojitos also left us vulnerable when the pudding menu appeared and the lure of the S'mores fondue proved irresistible. A cast iron dish filled with a raft of burnished marshmallows, bobbing on a lake of molten chocolate and served with a tin of graham crackers - the thinner, rectangular American cousin of the digestive - for dipping. This was very simple, very sweet and very good.

Service, at 12.5 per cent, is included, but that didn't stop our waiter - competent enough, if a little distracted throughout our meal - asking if the Ewing wanted to add another gratuity for him as the 'the first one is shared amongst all the staff'. An irritating, but apparently common occurrence here and one that even befell Grace Dent when she reviewed it in the Evening Standard; she wasn't a fan of thee practise (neither was I - TE) or the food... My tip? Come for the cocktails, crustaceans and 'cue but double check that bill.

A taste of home: E Pelliccis

There’s a kind of special moment you sometimes get when you’re on holiday -  maybe it’s when you’re walking through a fug of incense in a backstreet market; or squeezed in a thrumming side-street bar as the evening kicks off; or sitting in sleepy town square, watching locals smoking and playing chess – and the magic suddenly strikes you and you think if only it was like this at home.

Of course being on holiday also means you conveniently forget that haggling over your weekly Tesco’s shop, or being pinned up against the wall by the hordes at your local when all you really wanted was a quiet after-work pint, would seem completely insufferable when you’re back in the real world. And who really remembers how to play chess, anyway.

Well, I had my own moment, on the Bethnal Green Road of all exotic locations, just a few weeks ago. A moment that’s so perfect that you feel like you’re in a book and you don’t ever want the story to ever end; and all before breakfast.

Well, more accurately, for breakfast. But while I was waiting for my fry up and drinking my way through the second cup of thick, malty tea I was already thinking – as I idly read the advert for a commemorative birthday party for the Kray twins that was stuck in the window  - that as moment’s come, they don’t get much better than this. And better still, I was at home.

Well, more accurately, on the Bethnal Green Road. At E Pelliccis, the celebrated café that has been in the same family since it was built in 1900 and who have fed everyone from the aforementioned Krays (who often ran their ‘business’ from here) to Henry Cooper to most of the cast of EastEnders. The bright yellow Vitrolite frontage and Art Deco-style marquetry panelled interior remain untouched - leading to the building being Grade II listed a decade ago which means that, like my favourite caff, the Regency Café in Pimlico, when you step through the door it’s hard to tell if it’s 2016 or 1960.

We, of course, were here for the full English (which come sans beans as standard, so remember to add them in if you’re a legume fan) mine without egg but with a wonderful puck of homemade bubble, a pan-fried potato and veg cake with the vegetal funk from the leftover boiled cabbage and broccoli. One of the few things, the others being sausage sandwiches and corned beef hash, that I prefer with brown sauce. The rest of it was pretty spot on, too, especially the fried mushrooms, which were as fine as any I’ve had.

Here the sauce is in squeezy bottles, the marge thickly spread on your toast 'do you want another slice, gels?’, and you can get a fried slice with a fried egg on it; surely the key evidence in the case against having to show the calorie counts on restaurant menus.

It's also worth trying to leave room for a slice of the bread pudding for afters, you can always get it to takeaway. (Also checkout Percy Ingle bakery a couple of doors down, the only place apart from Greg’s, I’ve ever seen my beloved Tottenham cake).

Even better than the food is the service, which revolves around non-stop banter (in the traditional sense, when it meant being both quick-witted and good-natured) from both the customers and the staff. My favourite part was the conversation that started up as we went to pay.  ‘Gels, I’ve been reading that Lady Chatterley's Lover. She might have been all prim and proper but - I don’t mean to be rude, gels - she still let him give her one’.

It’s an wonderful microcosm of London life and a slice of our city that makes me feel very proud; proving you don't need fancy foreign climes, just a good cup of splosh served with a friendly smile, to get that little magical shiver down your spine. Yours for 70p, but the feeling's priceless.