Shepherdess Cafe

As Donne famously said, 'no man is an island', something that can be extended to most things in this tangled web of a word we're passing through, but when you look at the Shepherdess Cafe, just of the Old Street Roundabout, it's hard not to think of it adrift both architecturally and culturally. A piece of living history, that endures as everything changes around it.

Of course, old isn't always good. There's no point clinging onto the past if it's no longer fit for purpose. I mean, I sometimes get nostalgic about those little pots of pre-grated Parmesan, that smelt like sick yet seemed such a revelation in the late 80's, but I don't want to sprinkle them on my pasta anymore.

Thankfully the Shepherdess is reassuringly nostalgic, while still having a place in the modern world. There's a big all day breakfast menu - the builder's being the most popular, on our first visit we were the only ones not wearing hi-vis for most of it - but also porridge and poached eggs and even a 'Nick the Greek brekkie', with grilled halloumi, olives and chopped salad.

Lunchtime sees comforting classics like pies with peas, liver and bacon, scampi, chops, salads (the tinned sardine option is pleasingly retro, if pretty unappetising) and jacket spuds. And a huge choice of sandwich fillings can be ordered on breads ranging from baps to bagels, brown sliced to baguettes. 

Just. Look. At. That. Thick cut bacon, grilled tomato, perfect cheap sausage with it's burnished coat reassuringly paste-like middle; excellent mushrooms (mushrooms seem very tricky to get right) and a chip breakwater stopping the baked beans from escaping (imperative - TE).

While bubble and squeak is my favourite potato application to accompany breakfast, I'm really quite into any kind of fried potato tin the morning, even the controversial chip. Not least because I know it upsets the magical Stealth, and so I always ensure I send her a photo. It's actually almost impossible to avoid a chip here as most plates feature a couple, even if they are not requested, as a kind of garnish.

I asked for a couple of slices of bread alongside, so I could make a cheeky chip butty.  Soft white sliced and hot salty chips melting into the the butter, another clear advantage of having fried spuds on the plate.

I'm not sure that a bagel with three poached eggs, no skimping here, hollandaise and smoked salmon (plus half a dozen chips) is the best option on a raging hangover; but what do I know? (yeah, yeah, no one likes a smugkins - TE).

Quite a lot, as it happens, as I watched the Ewing valiantly attempt her breakfast after the shenanigans of the previous night - involving much red wine at The Z in Shoreditch and ending up with her carrying a cup of hot chocolate across the hotel room and into bed in a manoeuvre that would have made Mrs Overall proud. She wasn't enamoured with the packet sauce, but I think too much sauce the evening before had as much to do with that... 

In my old age I think I'm becoming a less is more kinda girl (although I'm still not into vanilla ice cream or ready salted crisps), and on my most recent visit I went with a classic cabbie combo, but with #noegg and extra mushrooms. Plenty of salt and vinegar on the  steaming hot chips and two rounds of toast, for a toasted bacon sarnie, on the side. As close to an early morning state of transcendence as I'm ever going to get.

When the waitress asked Ewing 'chips or salad?' there was a half second pause, to which she quickly interjected before my wife could reply; 'chips!' Of course it had to be chips, especially when they are freshly cooked, crisp and fluffy like these.

To go with her chips she ordered a cheese and mushroom omelette, a childhood favourite her mum used to make for her. Despite my enduring egg hatred I've kind of got a feeling I'd quite like an omelette if I could get over my distrust. I valiantly tried a mouthful of this, and while it was about fifty per cent cheese, it was really rather good.

While a crazy array of Inception-esque buildings continue to shoot up around it, and you can eat your way around the globe in the restaurants nearby - from Mexican to Scandinavian, to ramen - the Shepherdess remains as a wonderfully isolated, but never alone, example of old school London.

Serendipity and the Magic Roundabout

Chance, fate, destiny, karma, whatever you want to call it, I'm not really one to subscribe to cosmic intervention. As Arnold Palmer said; 'the more I practice, the luckier I get'. However, even for the most grounded of us (or anyone taking part in a spelling bee), sometimes serendipity is a very useful word to have in your vocabulary.

Case in point came on the day of my trip to the Statistical Society for geeky Census-type things. Being by the Barbican it seemed like the perfect chance to try out the Burger Bear pop up, if not for the meat and beer then for the novelty of being slap bang in the middle of Old Street Roundabout. 

I also had my Kickstarter voucher, procured when Tom Reaney, AKA Burger Bear Tom, had first pitched his idea of a east London-based double-decker container diner. The project was successfully funded, but various hold ups and hassles meant that (although you could redeem vouchers at Stoke Newington's Stokey Bears spin off) my postcard was tidily 'filed away' until the project (and the patties) were back cooking on gas. 

Of course, when attempting to finally unearth the postcard from it's safe place, I managed to find everything but the one thing I was looking for. And, after an evening of fruitless rifling through various piles of papers and in various nooks and crannies (and various fingers pointed at various family members...), I conceded it was gone. C'est la vie, the burger would still be mine, voucher or not. 

Then - like my very own scene in a bad b movie based on a film staring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale - as I grabbed my book on 70s politics I was determined to finish, I found it contained not one bookmark but two. Alongside the the Katz's Delicatessen business card I had been using was the missing Burger Bear postcard the Ewing had deployed. 

Some people may call this fate. Other, less charitable ones, may see it as your wife starting to read the book your currently reading, using your postcard to mark her place and then putting it back on the shelf and forgetting about it (oh you live with such a rogue - TE).... Either way, my crowdfunded lunch was back on.

With my voucher safely stowed and my stats all safely collated (who knew data collection could spark such drama), all I had to do was navigate my way through the blazing streets of the Barbican, through the hustle of suits in their summer shirts on Whitecross Market and up Old Street. Luckily the chalk board positioned in the middle of the Old Street Station underpass gave the final neon clue that even I couldn't miss. 

Up on the roof, the roundabout vibes are suitably hip; there's Relax, a bar, offering coffee and cocktails, running down one side. The Prawnography hut - offering, amongst other fishy fare, spider crabs smoked on the big green egg and the eponymous crustaceans with szechuan butter and beer bread - tucked around one corner; and Burger Bear - pumping out tunes with your fumes (the whole place feels remarkably tranquil and green, considering where it's situated) tucked around the other. 

My burger - the Grizzly Bear with cheese bacon and bacon jam - was without superlative. An offering that along with P&B and Bleecker, make up my top three London examples of beef in a bun. This one, dare I say it, may have been the best; shiny buns, 'merican cheese glazed on to the flattop-fried patty, topped with crisp shards of pig and nestling on a bed of red onion and iceberg.

Alongside were some fiendishly garlicky fries, cooked fresh to order and a frosty pint of Bear Hug Brewing's Spirit pale ale. Salt smoke, fat, hops; the perfectly balanced meal. I even got to sit next to Mr Burger Bear himself, as I made the futile attempt of trying to wrestle with my burger and keep the grease splodges from my book. Sometimes I feel the payoff for pleasure is worth the congealed cheese in your margins.

And then it's over. The most fun I have (legally) had on a roundabout since Becky Fair 1996. Although this time I managed to keep my dignity and my lunch. Get down there before the fleeting summer's through.