Breakfast with Bruno - July 2012

Along with the Regency Cafe in Pimlico, this is where we should be sending our Olympic visitors if we want to show them the roots of British dining life.

It's not a venerable institution with jacketed staff buzzing like bluebottles around portly elites at linen swagged tables, nor will the food be anything to write home about. It's a perfectly preserved example of the down at heel blue collar cafes that thronged London's streets from the middle of last century.

Proudly strutting under the noses of nearby chains on now sanitised Wardour Street, Bruno's feels like an anachronism, a tasty throwback to the 60s with it's laminate table tops, distressed vinyl seats and coffee machine in pride of place on the counter. 'Why not try a... chicken burger' implores the faded sign of an ages unchanged mix of quirky Soho citizens and locally working wisecracking labourers.

The provenance may be cash and carry rather than heritage producer but almost nothing beats the pleasure of hand loading rounds of salty bacon between slabs of chewy butter soaked bloomer and firing it down your neck. Nothing that is other than using your improvised device to mop the glistening eggy plate first.

These days, a fry a week puts you in health check territory and even at £7 with tea and toast you wouldn't want too many of these. That being said, if you are living the unexamined life or are in need of a ketchup shaped blob of nostalgia, then Bruno's your man.

   

Props for the chops - New Tayyabs and Lahore - July 2012

  Mention Brick Lane to most Londoners and you'll get a variety of references to grubbily ubiquitous East End hipsters selling secondhand tat, a mention of the various markets and boutiques that dot the area and a bewildering level of advice about the curry houses, dive bars and beigel bakeries that glitter the forcibly pedestrianised length. I, reader, am no different, and certainly more opinionated than most.

There last weekend were the Manchester constabulary, covering no doubt for our boys in blue now seconded to vital duties protecting the brand positioning of Coke, Maccy D's and the rest of them over at the Olympic Park. Watching a couple of them eying up the menu at one of the curry cabins lining the narrow road, I was tempted to guide them due south of Curry Mile, toward two of the better places to eat round there.

Tayyabs is the older, smaller and more feted. In comparison, nearby Lahore Kebab House is a barn of a place. Both have queues, though the two floors mean you'll find it easier to get into Lahore. Like the two teams in Manchester, they've both got their fanatical cheerleaders with a tribal love for one over the other and they're both full of people who have travelled miles to worship. 

Neither take reservations (except for very large groups) and both are BYOB which cuts the not excessive cost still further. Most importantly, neither is somewhere you'd take a vegetarian date for a quiet romantic night. You're coming to here to praise the gods of Pakistani grills and eat expertly cooked meat until you fall into a sweaty masala scented coma.

I used to work with a bloke whose uncle ran one of the busy tourist traps on the main lane. When we went, we were treated like kings by his family and force-fed free curry till we couldn't cope. And despite this, we always went to Tayyabs or Lahore. Not only so he could have a cheeky beer, but because he couldn't tell his folks that they'd been out grilled, and oh how they had.

Both seriously specialise in their soft and savoury meats, served without ceremony, blisteringly hot from the grill. I've never held much truck with the other menu items. If I'm there it's for the lamb chops. Dry rubbed with a garam masala, lemon and chilli blend, thrown through the furnace of the tandoor and on your plate a minute later. 5 chops for £7 or so and the food of kings. It's hard to look sexy as you suck the plump pink flesh from the charred bone but it's an almost erotic dining experience. Soaking up any juice with warm and buttery naan from the same oven, meat eaters will be in heaven.

From remembrance, Tayyabs does better at the other curries on the menu, on a recent visit to Lahore, my lamb pilau was tender but muted and neither have impressed me with their dhal. Expect brusque (at best) service, they've got a lot of people to get through after all, and worth repeating, don't go here with a vegetarian... If I had to choose, condemned to only go to one from here to eternity? I'd probably pick Lahore. The frenetic atmosphere is definitely a part of the experience at Tayyabs, but the chops are usually as good in either, and I can't bear to wait too long for that sweet, sweet spiced meat...

  

Michelin quality bar snacks at the Gilbert Scott - July 2012

They've settled down at St Pancras station, all of the builders have moved next door to repair years of damage to the original monstrous carbuncle King's Cross.

Railway restaurants are one of those things we don't seem to be able to get right in this country. They're too often poorly operated by franchises with low to no service standards, just an excuse to rip off occasional visitors. travel in rural France if you ever want to see how these sites could work.

Hearing that Marcus Waring would 'consult' on the menu at the grand St Pancras hotel made me wonder if this wasn't just another, higher end franchise, intent on extracting too much money for substandard fare.

I'd avoided the main restaurant until now, and on the basis of what little I sampled that could have been an error. Arriving mistakenly an hour before my train, I still didn't have time to sample the main menu, but I did have time to sample an excellent selection of bar snacks and a cheeky Chinin Blanc.

The room alone is worth an entry fee (or at least a drink), fully restored to its grandeur. Anchored with an art deco bar, the high painted ceilings carry away the drunken yammering of the herd of estate agents celebrating a deal next to me. Their Veuve-fuelled party lasted until one bold boy 'jokingly' pinched the breast of his female co-worker. The resultant slap couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

Posh pork scratchings are appearing on a number of menus at the moment, and these are the best I've sampled outside Claude Bosi's bucolic Wimbledon gastropub, the Fox and Grapes. Puffed up like chicharon, these bite-sized porcine pillows are subtle and almost refined. Dipped into a tureen of homemade apple sauce, I could eat them all day.

Salt cod croquettes are bigger than I'd expected. Not a patch on Jose, but robust and filling. Excellent bread, fennel seed loaf a highlight, and a decent pull of that ice cold aromatic white brought the total with service in at just under £20. Admittedly more than the traditional railway station sandwich, but worth the extra expense as a treat.

      

Can the Rye satisfy? Not on this showing - July 2012

A semi local of mine for a number of years has had it's most dramatic reinvention, from ugly local duckling to fully fledged gastro pub.

The owners, Capital Pub Co, are no newcomers to the market and (although owned by boozy behemoth Greene King) have form in taking down at heel sites and creating the kind of interesting, smart spaces that upwardly mobile locals don't mind spending their bucks in. They've certainly done it with near neighbours the Victoria, the Florence and the Actress, none of which I object to wasting time in at all. 

Walking into the handsome Victorian space, there's an initial sense that the design team may have done it again. A bustling bar opens onto an extensive beer garden. The big open plan kitchen and a light airy space already full of Dulwich refugees would indicate the design team at least can award themselves another tick.

That being said, there's definitely a lot of settling in to do here. Both behind the bar and on the other side of the pass. If you're going to put burgers on the menu in the former site of a Meatwagon pop up then you'd better make sure that they're blood(il)y good. On examination, these are poor at best. A jerk chicken burger is a neat nod to nearby Rye Lane, but this verged on anaemic. If there was any seasoning to it at all it was a light dust that did nothing for the dry breast. 

The too solid, too gray steak burger came without the cheese ordered (at an extra quid) but after a 50 minute wait we didn't send it back. Buns were workmanlike and nothing to write home about. Neither burger was hideous, but there was definitely an air of disinterest about them. Accompanying chips were prepped like mini skinless roasties but had spent too little time in direct heat and glistened, pale and uninteresting, on a cliched chopping board. Bread and olive oil was frankly random. The oil and (very cheap) balsamic came served in a tiny teacup, necessitating drowning the bread in oil to get any balsamic. We didn't finish it, they didn't ask why...

Service is another area of early concern. It's hurried, harried and amateur, if at least charming. A perpetual bugbear of mine, none of the staff knew who was next, picking punters at random and raising the temperature the other side of the counter. Despite there being four behind a not very busy bar, we still had a ten minute wait. Guys, you've got some really competent staff in the group, surely you could have shipped a couple in and not had an entire crew of newbies on at a new pub? 

Sure it's a local boozer, and they've only been open a few weeks, but I think it's a fair comment if you're going to charge me £17 for two glasses of wine and a lager, and push food out at Michelin prices in Peckham. Admittedly the pricing is Arbutus rather than Ducasse but the point still stands.

Despite this, I know I'll be back. It's close by, convenient for mates and the allotment and I hope it will settle down, but they need to really up their game on this showing.