First we got a couple of delis and a couple of the local spit and sawdust boozers metaphorically cut their hair and had a wash. Then the little odd independent boutiques started to open... a newer sort of person started queuing outside the exceptional but resolutely local butcher William Rose, an ernest sort of person, a fleece wrapped, rugby shirt, sensible shoe wearing broadsheet reader who "really wanted to stay West, but when we started thinking about the kids it was either move here, or move out of London".
And they demanded places to eat, and places to shop, and places to drink, with other similar spirits and their Bugaboo prams filled with flaxen haired organic, free range children. And then in one dreadful year, they opened The White Company, Oliver Bonas and Foxtons. The Richmondification of East Dulwich was almost complete.
This isn't a teary eyed pean to a stalwart of the retail community deemed unsuitable for little Jemimahs and Jacobs, closed and turned into a high-class cheese shop, this is just to prepare you for the people who occupy the Blue Mountain Cafe on Northcross Road, ground zero of the yummy mummy.
It's twee. By which I mean reclaimed oak furniture and country cottage chic, and mismatching, and quirky, some of those things deliberately. They have set spaces for the prams and pushchairs - woe betide anyone trying to get a table here from 10.30 on a weekday. It defines the term mother's meeting. The food is well sourced and relatively well prepared, certainly freshly prepared. Their Full Monty breakfasts certainly are a thing of beauty, sourced and prepared by someone who really cares about what they're putting out. The sausages and bacon, from the aformentioned William Rose, are solid meaty protein torpedos. There's a decent pile of buttery mushrooms and a frankly enormous heap of beans. Perfectly poached eggs top thick slabs of brown toast. A substantial load, more suited for a trucker's cafe than a genteel suburb.
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