Restaurants

By Simon Coppock

It took a team of two reviewers no less than four visits to eventually find this little café open at the advertised times – so treat those morning opening times as an aspiration rather than a commitment. But we were charmed by the place when we finally did get through the door.

Bright young Aussies Charlie and Blair opened this shop unit as a kind of works canteen for the creative types who inhabit the surrounding live-work block (during our visit, a dress-maker and a ginger-bearded fellow who had been creating a table popped in).

On the ground floor of a dull-looking building in a car park across the A12 from Victoria Park, all around it are the repair shops, lock-ups and the knotted streets of an industrial estate, so this isn’t a café you stumble across. The décor is like hip student digs – a single room with books along one wall, a couple of sofas and shin-height coffee table, Yoda perched on an aquarium, a partial bicycle frame by the door – and the tiny service area (espresso machine, sink, work surface) sits behind a high counter, alongside the computer from which Charlie and Blair produce their video magazine, So What (www.sowhatmagazine.org: 'more than just a magazine... a space for artistic and critical dialogue').

Punchy Square Mile coffee is served in proper china, there are a few Clipper teas, a short list of toasties, and whatever cake's been baked that day.

Our cheese, ham and tomato toastie was excellent. The almost mature cheese, spinach leaves and red onion lifted rather plain ham, and there was no explosion of molten tomato as we bit into it – but we would have preferred our warmed-up slices of banana bread to have been served in the conventional order, that is, after the savouries. Unorthodox maybe, but a relaxing place for a nibble if you find it open.

Time Out London Issue 2027: June 25-July 1 2009