Everything in this post is no doubt more interesting to me than to you, and more useful for my own reference than for yours, but here you go anyhow.
3 Dray Walk
Spitalfields
London E1 6QL
Story Deli is opposite the Rough Trade record store, just off Brick Lane. There are small and communal tables inside and a few long communal tables outside. If you sit outside you have to step inside to place your order and pay, then they bring it out to you when it's ready. Very very thin crusts piled with good fresh interesting toppings. While normally I tend toward the less is more view on pizza toppings, here it was a success.
52 Brushfield Street
Spitalfields
London E1 6AG
This is Market Coffee, a few blocks away. Really I should have taken a picture of my little Bakewell tart, which was very good. Actually that may be it in the background, but at that degree of detail it might as well be a wad of paper, so no points to me.
Russell Square
Bloomsbury
London WC1N 1DB
I am used to the idea that cafes in gardens and squares are likely to be both dismal and overpriced, like museum cafes but with more Cadbury flake. The Cafe in the Garden at Russell Square is run by an Italian family, however, and the coffee shows it. I have no idea how the sandwiches and things are but we had several excellent cappuccinos and lattes here while playing cards and watching the squirrels.
This squirrel went methodically from planter to planter, pushing his whole face in up to the ears, and then turning over the dirt with his head like a spade. Perhaps he was a truffle pig in a former life.
47-48 St John's Square
Clerkenwell
London EC1V 4JJ
The Modern Pantry (the building hiding in the upper right corner here) also serves dinner, but we only went for morning coffee. There's also a small takeaway shop, "the pantry," which has nice salady things. The "honey roasted oats," aka granola, with yogurt and grated apple, are very good. Somehow I continually found the service disconcerting and subtly wrongfooted, or at least it kept making US feel subtly wrongfooted, perhaps an instance of culture clash somehow, though the only one of its sort we ran into, but we did keep going back. I note that the internet generally seems to find the waitstaff delightful, so presumably the problem is me.
You are making me miss London.
Posted by: matt | 07/02/2009 at 10:45 PM
Missing London is the proper state to be in regarding London, unless one is in London.
Posted by: redfox | 07/03/2009 at 07:01 AM