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.

Breakfast at Browns

I've eaten a fair few fry-ups recently, which is slightly unfortunate as I'm going to California in a couple of weeks and far from being beach body ready, I'm more in danger of being harpooned if I get too close to the shoreline.

Still, where's the fun in porridge? Especially if you're in the City of Dreaming Spires for the weekend and you've got the opportunity to go to Brown's Cafe for a proper breakfast.

Inside is old old school fomica and closely packed wooden tables and chairs, pretty much how it's always been; in fact a recent episode of Endeavour - the pre-Morse Morse, set in the 60s - featured scenes that were shot here and pretty much the only thing they had to change were the menu boards.

Speaking of the menu, of course it had to be the May Day breakfast - named for the annual Oxonian celebrations that start on nearby Magdalen Bridge - twice, once with beans and fried bread for me and once with grilled tomato and toast for the Ewing.

Tea is still made in an urn, with loose tea leaves and is the colour of Frank Butcher when attempted to woo Pat in his rotating bow tie (and little else) and strong enough to stand your spoon up in. Proper stuff.

One handy thing about being an ouef-avoider is there’s always scope for swapsies, in this case half a grilled tomato for my egg, a deal I was more than happy with, although I also got hit up for a spoonful of my beans. The other constituent parts were all present and correct – comfortingly paste-like sausage, two rashers of thick unsmoked back bacon, a scattering of token mushrooms and a couple of discs of black pudding that weren’t quite as crisp as I would have liked, but I like them to be fried until they are black on black.

Toast, slightly irritatingly, comes perched on top of your breakfast, which saves on washing up but makes it much harder to construct a cheeky bacon sarnie on the side. Again, in the spirit of sharing, we went 50/50 on our sliced carbs – half toast and half fried slice.

Reader, I can tell you it was a revelation. Whilst a good fried slice remains a god amongst mere men as part of a breakfast, anyone who has ever eaten a whole slice, or heaven forfend, two, at breakfast time will probably tell you there day all went downhill from there. The first, crisp triangle, anointed with a few sweet beans and a slash of spicy brown sauce, slips down easily enough, but soon it becomes an greasy trudge to the finish line followed by a packet of Rennies for lunch.

If chops, chips and cups of creosote coloured tea aren't your thing, then the Portuguese heritage of the owners mean you can also get a bolo de arroz- a kind of Portuguese muffin made of rice flour and wrapped in a distinctive skirt of lettered paper - or the perennial favourite, the pasteis de nata, or custard tart.

After just half a fried slice even the Ewing couldn't manage one of these crisp and flaky beauties, with their wobbly centres and burnished tops, but they were still fine a couple of days later, accompanied by a pot of strong coffee.

While I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks of In-N-Out burgers, Dodger Dogs, french dip sandwiches and avocado on everything nothing beats a good British fried breakfast; I just hope I can still get in my shorts.

Wycombe Bites: Breakfast at Bluegrass

After the brief terror of nearly losing one of my favourite local restaurants, I've decided to show some love for some of the excellent food and drink currently coming out of my adopted home town - a big change from the days when I'd get the train to meet my friends as a teenager, and we'd spend our afternoons eating cheeseburgers and smoking cigarettes at McDonalds (inside, using little foil ashtrays, those were the days) followed by sharing an illicit bottle of vodka down on the Rye.

I've written favourably about Bluegrass before, the pudding are particularly good, but a little (long) while ago they also started doing breakfast. With pancakes, smoked meat, bottomless filter coffee and tea (served in huge enamel tea pots) and just ten minutes walk from our front door, it's needless to say the Ewing and I were soon regular visitors. 

For a whole egg-avoider, pancakes are a perfect breakfast foodstuff, and the ones they serve at Bluegrass are my favourite fluffy american type. That said, the ones served here are a little flatter than normal, being more like a the scotch pancakes that we used to bung in the toaster and spread with butter and jam when I was growing up.

That said, anything covered with crispy bacon - they serve proper streaky stuff here - banana, pecans and maple syrup is always going to be pretty good. They are also commendably generous with the toppings and serve shots of maple syrup for extra lubrication.

Bacon and banana is my favourite of the combos I've tried, but the fresh blueberry and blueberry jam, served here with some phallic bacon and plenty of syrup, is also good. More unusual, and worth a try, is the apple and sausage stack - with bramley apple sauce, cinnamon sugar and pecans - which is also good value at six quid. 

For a mere fiver you can get your pancakes with chocolate chips, caramel sauce and ice cream. It's a majestic-looking plate of food that's just a little too much  refined sugar at such an early hour; although, judging from the amount of people ordering it when I've visited, plenty disagree.

Even better than the pancakes are the Bluegrass breakfast plates. The smokehouse plate- texas toast, baked eggs, bacon, sausages, pit beans, smoked mushrooms, grilled tomato and homemade hash brown - is my favourite, while the Ultimate Plate also adds a pile of pulled pork and a short stack of pancakes.

As their flat top grill is in use cooking the pancakes and texas toast, the eggs come oven-baked in little enamel dishes. Apparently, they're pretty good with soldiers of the aforementioned toast for dipping; I've never tried them, preferring to swap my l'oeuf for an extra, oniony hash brown, which are some of the best I've eaten.

So, while the only smoking going on is the meat - which is all still  slow smoked over hardwood on site - and the illicit vodka has been replaced by a menu of bourbons and whisky (which you can mix with Welch's grape juice, for a real American breakfast vibe), I can certainly think of worse ways to while away a morning in Wycombe.

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.

The art of compromise - bank holiday beer special

Sometimes, I think the key to happiness is mastering the art of compromise (although, at others, I'm pretty sure it's all about eating cold pizza in my dressing gown). For instance, the Ewing loves reclaimed furniture - or anything made out of an old pallet - I love pizza and both of us have a healthy interest in beer. Which made the Crate Brewery, which prominently features all three of the above, a particularly appealing choice for the Bank Holiday, while also giving us an extra day to get over the hangover.

It also happens to be in Hackney Wick and the overground rail closures, coupled with the bank holiday bus replacement service, meant we pretty much needed the extra twenty four hours to get back home again.

Situated in the White Building on the River Lea Navigation  - a canalised river running from rural Hertfordshire to the River Thames at Bow Creek - the bar is the perfect spot for a few beers in the sunshine. The waterfront location also means visits from The Record Deck, a working barge that also sells vinyl, that the Ewing was very pleased to see moored up and already spinning tunes as we arrived.

The bar at Crate is a masterclass in recycling. Old railway sleepers, cleverly cobbled together from local artists' cast-offs, make up the bar; ladders and ratchet straps make indoor seats, rusty bed springs have been fashioned into eccentric light fittings and the canal-side benches and tables are made from scaffold planks - even the spare off-cuts of wood have been used to make planters for a herb garden. Across the yard they have a brew-shed, where they make the beers. In other words, the Ewing's paradise.

To start I tried the Crate Pale ale, both in bottle and on keg; the latter was cleaner and crisper, but also less aromatic and not as interesting. A very nice beer, either way, and at 4.5 percent, perfect for a session in the sun. The Ewing also went for something steady to start with in the Sour, a fantastically vibrant beer infused with a touch of passionfruit and hibiscus while retaining the power to make you grimace slightly on sipping that a good sour should.

They specialise in wood-fired pizza - more specifically crisp, Roman style pizza, rather than softer Neapolitan style. While it’s significantly easier to eat, lacking the somewhat soupy centre of a southern Italian pie, a roman base does bring to mind a giant Carr’s water cracker. As a biscuit to eat with a lump of cheese, that’s probably a good thing - they were always my dad’s favourite when I was growing up -  but as a vehicle for melted cheese, I prefer something a little less friable.

That said, my favourite ever pizza was eaten in Rome - a Bianca pie, topped with courgette flowers, anchovy and mozzarella - cooked by a tiny guy who resembled John Paul II, and thereafter nicknamed ‘Pizza Pope’for the rest of our trip.

The toppings here are pretty outré. You can stick to cheese or meat if you like, although the prosciutto and salami were off on our visit, but they also offer walnut and sweet potato, banana and dahl (even the Ewing wasn't sure), and, our choice, Middle Eastern lamb with pine nuts, spinach and mint.

The crisp base and the ovine topping made it a close cousin to the lamachun - although canalside it will set you back twelve quid, as opposed to the three quid of Green Lanes. Commendably, certainly at that price, they hadn’t skimped on the toppings and a more robust crust meant that they held up well. It also went very well with two halves of their keg stout and the cask porter.

Billed as the UK's first dedicated tank bar, that's the fermenting vessel rather than a military vehicle, our next stop, Howling Hops, was just around the corner. Of course their too hip for signage, so look for the crowds drinking from dimpled schooners outside if the weather's nice, or the scribbled note on the side door if it isn't.

Originally, they started brewing in the basement of the Cock Tavern, on nearby Mare Street, and selling their beers in the bar above. But soon thirsty East Londoners meant demand had outstripped their capacity and a bigger site was sought. This one mixes bar and brewery, allowing you to drink the freshest beer straight from the source, while giving them the capacity to bottle some of their beers for distribution, too.

I started with their Running Beer brown ale, before moving on to the Pale XX Superior No.1 and the IPA 2 West Coast Special. All good, the brown ale and IPA particularly. The Ewing stuck with the blonde beers; an Amber Dexter amber ale and the  East End Hefeweizen, brewed in collaboration with Pressure Drop. The latter reconfirming my dislike of wheat beers while being my wife's favourite of the trip.

The food is provided by Billy Smokes, with a range of smoked, fried and fermented goods, including the Big Fuck Off Tray of Meat (an array of protein including glazed ham hock, sausages, beef and lamb belly) available. Our visit saw a more restrained selection, with a small selection of wraps and buns and a handful of sides on offer.

My sausage bun, a chunky disc of homemade smoked sausage made with the Running beer, was served on a shiny brioche bun and came topped with a smattering of citrus slaw and house bbq sauce. All the classic components done well, this made a handsome (second) lunch.

The beer can chicken roll was more divisive. The Ewing loved it (it was sublime, believe me - TE), and she is a connoisseur in chicken sandwiches, but I found it hard to see it as much more than a sarnie. Yes, it was a commendably good sarnie piled with juicy chicken, which at seven quid it should have been, but was lacking much in the way of promised BBQ flavour and made me think wistfully about crispy smoked thighs and smoky, charred wings.

One thing we did agree on was the pickles, a snappy little selection of cucumbers, carrot, peppers and green beans (a very underestimated pickling vegetable) that made me want to go home and crack open the Sarsons and make some of my own. (There’s a solid preserving pedigree in my lineage, with our family being the lucky recipients of several jars of legendary Nanny Pickle each year until my Nan recently hung up her apron).

Predictably, just as were leaving Howling Hops, the Bank Holiday heavens opened - which threatened to make the ride on the number 30, all the way from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch, feel like a very long one; especially after the last round of beers. 

But nabbing a spot 'driving the bus' and gaining Prince for company - we picked up his eponymous 1979 vinyl album from the record barge moored by Crate (a compromise that meant the Ewing letting me wail along to 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' at ear-splitting levels if she could get a new record player) meant the promise of some slow jams could make even the slow crawl home enjoyable.

Robbers and Cops - Regency Cafe and the MOJ

I've got an idea... Why don't you come 'round for breakfast? I'll squeeze some orange juice and grind some coffee and we can talk about this like adults. How's that sound?

Anyone that's familiar with the British crime caper Layer Cake may remember a pre-Bond Daniel Craig quoting the above line to a Serbian drug dealer who's on the hunt for a million missing ecstasy tablets. Even if you don't remember the intricacies of the script, then there's a good chance you would recall the scene filmed at Pimlico's legendary Regency Cafe, where a 'business breakfast' ends in an unfortunate incident with a kettle.

While our early lunchtime visit was far more amiable, nothing much else has changed; from the formica table tops to the plastic sauce bottles to the art deco tiling to the signed Spurs photos from the 60s, you could genuinely imagine eating here at any time during the last five decades and the décor being exactly the same -  preserved in aspic, just like the corned beef in their salads. 

Sure you can no longer enjoy a woodbine with your cup of tea - served here the colour of creosote (THE best colour for tea - TE) - but the food, from the steak pie with virginal boiled spuds and processed peas to the fish and chips served on a Friday, is unapologetically untouched by modern convention.

As well as an expertly stewed cup of splosh, dispensed from the ornate urn on the counter, there is also orange juice in glass bottles. Anyone who ever woke up to the clank of the milkman collecting the empties will share my nostalgia for the joyful ritual of shaking a bottle fresh off the step, before putting your thumb through the foil top. Happy days.

Our family only ever had milk delivered, so I was rather jealous to hear the Ewing’s mum also ordered orange juice for their breakfast when she was growing up; I’d have been very jealous if I’d found out she’d also had the little pots of Ski strawberry yoghurt.

The aforementioned homemade pie looked majestic, but who could pass up a lovingly crafted fry up - nothing’s getting grilled here. Here the standard English comes with either baked beans or tomato (both fresh and tinned are available) toast and tea or coffee. I added extra black pudding and shifted my egg over to the Ewing, although sadly they had already run out of bubble and squeak. 

For my money, this is exactly what a full English should look like; no avocado, no rocket (although I did notice my toast was made from brown bread) no fuss. The bacon was particularly noteworthy, although probably down to the fact it had been properly cooked on a well-seasoned flat top, rather than the provenance.

I’ve never knowingly turned down a stodgy school dinner-style pudding with custard, and here was no exception when I saw they had bread and butter pudding with cinnamon. Needless to say, my soporific tower of baked buttered bread, interspersed with plump raisins and spice and cloaked in a thick blanket of Bird’s finest made a fitting end to our meal.

The Ewing wasn't complaining too much about her chocolate sponge with chocolate custard, either. Both yours for two English pounds; we even got two free unclaimed cuppas thrown in to wash it down.

Our slap up feast was followed by stop four on the #brutaltour, my ongoing mission to visit all 54 buildings on Blue Crow Media's map of Brutalist London with a trip up the road to marvel at the wonderful Ministry of Justice. Designed by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, with Sir Basil Spence and completed in 1976, it stands out as a bold but fascinating chunk of modernism with it's fishtank windows and main tower that was, apparently, based on medieval Italian castles.

 

The last time I was here I was on the way to being late to my own wedding and had been told, in no uncertain terms, that there was no time for dawdling (although we still had room for a swift half before the ceremony. Also known as getting your priorities right). This time I had plenty of time to browse and found it interesting to see the contrast between the Regency Cafe, scene of a British crime drama, and the MOJ, brutal heart of British justice.

Built only thirty years apart, but a lifetime away in style and form, they both remain notable for different reasons; two nostalgic nuggets of London's recent history that's slowly being eroded by gaudy colored boxes and spiraling towers. As XXXX said in the film; 'when I was born, the world was a far simpler place. It was all just cops and robbers'.