West End Coffee Round Up

Brief one really, but I thought I'd highlight some of the new cafés and coffee joints which have been springing up recently - three of which are in W1. Curiously recession-defying, especially with West End rents, the London coffee movement does seem to be defiantly marching on against the ubiquity of the chains.

Parisian goodies at Cafe Gourmand

Two of the three are actually second ventures by established coffee heavies, but with different names, vibes and directions. This isn't empire building - Nude, Foxcroft, Tapped & Packed - much as I love you all, take heed.

Sensory Lab is a new place on Wigmore Street by the St Ali team. It's not a huge, brooding undertaking such as theirs resplendent with vertical garden and roastery, but more of a clean, fresh, small outlet with similar coffee provenance. Think Tapped & Packed, but a little smaller. It's at the bottom of Marylebone High St, which actually doesn't have any great coffee beyond Providores, so could clean up.

Speakeasy is sneakily located on one of the alleyways between Carnaby and Newburgh Streets, but the discreet location is belied by what at first appears quite a clinical set up - tall counters, a lot of concrete and white, with very bright lighting. The staff are however extremely sociable and fun, which makes it a more relaxing place. Great food selection as well.

This is from Leather Lane's Department of Coffee and Social Affairs but is a wholly different concept. The basement is a little cosier, but this is more of a take away venue than a wi-fi doss-house.

Café Gourmand is a rather grand looking place - also new and contemporary, but with a classical approach to cakes and fantastic vintage signage, it looks as if it could have been there for years. They specialise in teas also, and this is definitely more of a place to lounge than the other two. It has more of a continental feel to it, with quirky touches inside.

So three new venues all in the same postcode. Tapped & Packed's newish second place up near Warren Street makes four. Big postcode mind.

London's coffee offerings are going from strength to strength, and it's great that people are confident enough to expand and establish new venues - that the desire for meaningful, informed or just plain stylish coffee places has not yet been saturated. The scene is now long past aping and imitating a few Antipodean venues as imports, and only attracting said Antipodeans as customers, and is now proliferating into a London-wide discernment for better.

The girls in my office clutching their Square Mile flat whites have probably never been close to Melbourne or a food blog, and are not what one might call hipsters, but regular people who recognise that the 'coffee-flavoured milk drinks' from the high street are just not cutting it anymore.

Lunch musings (and Veneticus)

So while I attempt to dine at just a few of London’s hottest places, I actually eat at home more week nights than I don't. And except for the rare occasions I have anything left I am inclined to bring to work, lunch is realistically where most of my eating out happens.

Of course I’m not interested in blogging Pret or Eat (and nobody is interested in reading about them), but I do think there is a place for the upper end of quick, cheap weekday lunch spots. 

Some can be really quite good –the old marketing adage states that of quality, price and time, you can only ever choose two. But I’d disagree, and the lunch trade in London is extremely diverse and sophisticated, and ever improving with more street food, markets and open minds about what lunch can constitute. Yesterday’s sushi is today’s burrito – and sandwiches have evolved into gourmet treats too. 

I’m aware that I do have some rather esteemed company following this blog, to whom I am very grateful. Yet even the blogerati of London’s hotspots surely have boring or at least average lunches for more days that they are nibbling away at spicy pizzette?

Food blogs are as pluralistic as diners and cover many different styles. Some people have a huge talent for theoretical food writing and technical cookery blurb, others integrate their own recipes or do travel excellently. Here at TPT, I’m trying to be a realist and write an honest food blog which represents my life and times (!) rather than exclude 80% of my meals to deceptively present something more aspirational or fantastical. 

So I admit to having ordinary lunches, taking rubbish pictures, drinking too much to remember my meal the next day and I do genuinely look forward to airports so I have an excuse for my bi-annual McDonalds! 

As I said, I won’t be blogging every dodgy sandwich bar in Farringdon but there are some decent eateries worth mentioning, and we all need fuel to last the afternoon. So you could do a lot worse than try Veneticus. It’s a deli near the Leather Lane bit of Clerkenwell Road, and has quite a few tables set up for diners.

fairly pointless picture showing about a quarter of the space

The staff are true Italians; exuberant and passionate about food and company, and the quality here is top notch. There isn’t a menu per se, but you can have panini, ciabatte and focaccie (did I get my plurals right?) made up from all of the fantastic ingredients from the deli counter. The meats are sliced to order, and the bread is baked there too.

the beast - each segment of prosciutto is about three slices thick!

For £4-5, you can do extremely well. My olive focaccia with gargantuan slabs of smoked buffalo mozzarella was packed to the rafters with more San Daniele that you would get at a deli for a fiver. I was astonished – the pic doesn’t do it justice but the whole sandwich had at least ten slices. I almost felt guilty at the amount of meat. But not quite... Accompanied with cherry tomatoes, a spicy balsamic they sell in the shop and so much cheese it spilled out, it was a challenge to finish.

The food store is quite comprehensive for both fresh deli produce and Italian groceries, with an amazing selection of wines (you can also have wine and beer in the café), good coffee and gelato made on site. Not too shabby for a quick working lunch at all…

Greetings from a London Pig

Hello,

So this is the food blog I've been threatening to start for ages.

I'm a bit of a pig you see, hence the trough-seeking. I'm London-based but love to travel so other places might feature if I'm fortunate to be jetsetting somewhere or other.

Needless to say, I also love pigs. Pork truly is the meat of the Gods, and criminally underrated too. But this blog won't be particularly geared towards pork, but rather general greed, combined with an at-times slavish pilgrimage to where's new and good. 

I've always found it a great shame that London has been rubbished from within and outside as a poor food city. This is simply not true - British cuisine may not be as respected or complex as other stalwarts, and we may not be able to cultivate the spiciest or spikiest fruits, but our good honest soil produces an amazing simplicity where ingredients can sing louder than spices.

And frankly, being arguably the most diverse place on Earth, we've probably got the best mix across the board - with New York as the obvious contender here (we're probably later to the foodie obsession). But would you expect to find the easy cool of Lantana in Paris, the niche udon obsession of Koya in Rome, or the buzzy, piggy delights of Brindisa in Tokyo? Maybe, but not definitely...

So that's a hint of what to expect - not dissimilar to the many other blogs I've been following for years! I'm more into the low-key and some uptown casual dining, but not really 'fine dining' although I'd dispute the term as many places have very fine service and very fine food without fuss.

I'm a big fan of the Antipodean coffee shops and cafes which are raising the coffee bar in London (Foxcroft and Ginger over Flat White for me) - and having spent some great times in Sydney, Melbourne and Wellington, I also love Asian food of all descriptions. Closer to home, tapas and pasta I could gorge myself on daily....and like any blogger these days, this pig loves a good burger. I love (almost obsessively) trying out new places, but also returning (also obsessively) to my favourites.

Quick caveats - I'm not the world's biggest seafood fan, but my equally piggy partner (now to be known as Piglet) will be no doubt coerced into ordering the fishiest things on the menu! And my camera work is a tad dodgy... And there's a danger I might enjoy the beer/wine/cocktails too much and forget the odd detail... but hopefully you'll enjoy - cheers!

TPT