Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

This Clerkenwell café, opened in autumn 2008, is housed in a former Victorian workshop used for cutting diamonds. As you’d expect it has lots of natural lighting, and the high ceilings, bare brick walls and large windows give it a surprisingly cosy feel, once fresh flowers and big bowls of fruit are used to decorate the bare wooden tables. The two young sisters who run this café, Johanna and Aoife Ledwidge, use good produce – organic meats, proper breads – to great effect in simple, home-style dishes. A chicken and vegetable soup is their grandmother’s recipe, and it’s rich and full-flavoured; a steak sandwich, the meat cooked rare, had all the right details with it, from a mustard and mayo dressing to ripe cherry tomatoes. The retro cakes are a hit too: Victoria sponge, coffee cake, carrot cake. J&A is now licensed (serving Languedoc wines), and is now open in the evenings Wed-Fri.

Time Out London May 2009