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This lofty café/bar, situated down a side street near Fenchurch Street station, may have a wholesome ‘Good Life’ look – planky bits of wood, watering cans, salvaged herb growers mounted on the wall – but the food is more school canteen than ‘River Cottage’.
There are big bowls of salad, a few bagels, a smattering of hot dishes and a large bowl of houmous laid out on the counter. A detox salad of raw kale, apple, date (date!) and avocado was a cloying jumble of ingredients that would probably have been better whizzed into a smoothie – it might have tasted better than an actual cold-pressed combo of celery, lemon, romaine and spinach, which was tart and refreshing, but hardly what you’d call delicious. Purple sprouting broccoli slathered in a creamy dressing and dotted with raisins and almond slivers was, on our early spring visit, super-seasonal, at least.
A larger dish of chicken curry and rice – that was the full description – was an imposing pile, heavy on grain and potato, warming and subtly sweet with mango. But refined it was not. Aesthetic aside, the school dinners vibe is overwhelming, even nostalgia-inducing. It could be rather charming if it weren’t for the prices – nearly £9 for the curry, around a fiver for the salads and juices – which are punchy enough to snap you out of your Proustian daydream, and straight back into the traffic-packed tumult of the Square Mile.