Bermondsey with a French Twist: Casse-Croûte Review

When I was a kid, we often spent our summer holidays in France. I was a vegetarian and a fussy eater and it didn't go well. 20 years later and I'm no longer a veggie and I'm also much less fussy, but I was still a little nervous this morning when I checked the menu du jour for Casse-Croûte, the new French restaurant in my 'hood, and spotted the noticeable absence of poulet and bœuf.  C'est normal, hein? But after a bit of Googling, I decided to be brave and order a meal in a French restaurant that wasn't poulet rôti or filet de bœuf.

Le menu du jour

Pretty much all of the good restaurants in my new quartier are on Bermondsey Street and I've been eyeing the newest opening, Casse-Croûte (which means "snack"), with interest. Sitting at one of the tables on the pavement or on the red-checkered-tablecloth-clad tables inside, you could almost be at a bistro in a small French town, rather than a five-minute stroll from the mess of London Bridge station.

There are two sittings, at 6 pm and 8 pm, but when we arrived, soon after 6, the tiny restaurant was already bustling.

Le bar. Plus token Michelin Man.

We ordered a carafe of red and some tap water (carafe d'eau) and perused the menu, which offered three choices for each course. I don't like squid, and after establishing that the tête de veau wasn't exactly my kind of beef, my starter was, by default, the œuf à la coque. This was a boiled egg (singular) with a few very elegant but sparse soldiers, garnished with a thin slice of cheese and a wafer of ham. It was nice, but at £6, quite an expensive egg. My friend's squid, tomato and bacon seemed a little better value for money.

Egg and soldiers, à la française

I might have been persuaded to eat pigeon, had it not come garnished with mushrooms. Instead, I ordered the truffade as my main course, which is a sort of delicious, cheesy potato pancake. It came garnished with salad and some cured ham. Probably a good thing I'm not still a vegetarian! Again it was nice, but a slightly strange main course — my friend's pigeon was a little light on the carbs so we mixed and matched.

The truffade (and the pigeon in the background).

The puddings were a little easier. I went for the chocolat liégeois: chocolate and vanilla ice creams with hot chocolate sauce and lots of cream. It was really good, although I was slightly sad that the almond macaroon I saw on the menu earlier in the week didn't show up.

Overall, we had a lovely evening. Casse-Croûte is a cosy, friendly place with great atmosphere and good food that is certainly way off the well-trodden, French culinary track. The prices were a little on the high side (particularly the egg), but not compared to other restaurants on Bermondsey Street or, say, France. If you're looking for a very authentic French restau in SE1 with good cooking and an interesting menu, you should give Casse-Croûte a try. There is no online booking, so give them a call on 020 7407 2140 — and the 8 pm sitting fills up pretty quickly, so don't leave it too late to book.

Casse-Croûte. 109 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3XB (Tube: London Bridge). Website. Twitter.

The Parents Aren't All Right

And I thought the parenting was bad in The Way Way Back! Well, Susanna (Julianne Moore) and Beale (Steve Coogan) in Scott McGehee and David Siegel's new movie What Maisie Knew make Trent, Pam, et al., look like angels. What Maisie Knew is loosely based on Henry James's novel of the same name, but set in present-day New York City instead of Victorian England.

As the film opens, the titular Maisie (Onata Aprile), a wide-eyed, precocious seven-year-old, opens the door of her parents' opulent New York apartment and rushes upstairs to find the money to pay the pizza delivery guy. Susanna, an ageing rockstar, and Beale, an art dealer, are in the late stages of a break-up more acrimonious, perhaps, than even The War of the Roses. The only stability in Maisie's life appears to come from her Scottish nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who genuinely seems to care for her, unlike Maisie's parents, who are more interested in using her as a pawn in their petty point-scoring. [A few spoilers follow, so look away now if you'd prefer to go in without too many details.]

But when the divorce comes through, the judge awards joint custody to both parents, and Maisie is then shuttled between Beale and Susanna every ten days. And when Susanna finds out that Margo is to become Maisie's step-mother as well as her nanny, she gets herself her own younger, blonder plaything in the form of Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård). Because Susanna and Beale are so wrapped up in their own lives, it falls to Margo and Lincoln to do most of the childcare and the shuttling, leaving them to wonder whether they were taken on as lovers or as hired help.

It's hard to say whether Susanna or Beale is a worse parent. Beale is distracted, detached and unable to relate to his young daughter, but Susanna is furious, sweary and constantly taking her anger and self-pity out on Maisie. She has no shame in telling her daughter exactly what she thinks of her ex-husband and, as her career begins to pick up again, seems to feel little guilt at abandoning Maisie at short notice, attempting to buy back her love with excessive, inappropriate presents. By contrast, Margo's and Lincoln's devotion for their step-daughter is touching. But when Beale's floundering career may mean a return to England, what will happen to Maisie and her families?

What Maisie Knew isn't always an easy film to watch. Moore's performance was scarily good — she sought inspiration for the role from Patti Smith and Courtney Love —and although the other adult leads were also good, their roles were, by their very nature, more understated than the angry rocker chick who forgot that she needed to grow up. Onata Aprile was also fantastic. She was only six when the movie was filmed and she was really impressive. The film is shot through her eyes, which meant she was in almost every scene and the young actress is definitely one to watch out for. The film itself was tightly scripted, packing a lot of punches in its 93-minute length, and keeping the drama moving neatly. I just think I need to go and re-watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to re-balance my mood!

Life's a Beach

The Way Way Back is one of those films where the kids seem way older than their years, while the adults spend most of the film acting like teenagers, or at least college students on spring break. Written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who also wrote the screenplay for The Descendants, The Way Way Back is a coming-of-age movie set in a seemingly idyllic Massachusetts beach community, which comes to seem like a prison for shy, 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James), our young hero.

Duncan is forced to spend the summer with his mother Pam (Toni Collette), her douchey boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and his daughter Steph (Zoe Levin) at Trent's summer house. His father seems to be more interested in his much-younger girlfriend, with whom he has run off, and Trent's barely concealed barbs are hardly working wonders for Duncan's fragile self-esteem. Steph and her friends ignore him and although he sees the neighbour's daughter Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) as a potential ally, he decides she's probably way out of his league.

While Pam and Trent fool around, frolicking with the neighbours, Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet), staying out drinking all night, Duncan tries to explore the limited charms of the small town. And before long, he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), who has been the manager of the local water park, Water Wizz, for far too long. Like the other adults in the film, Owen acts like he's still 21, but unlike the others he actually seems to want to help Duncan, so he offers him a job working at Water Wizz, and slowly Duncan's confidence begins to grow.

All is not well at the summer house, however, and when Duncan catches Trent in the act of something that confirms he is indeed the tool we thought he was, the situation gets worse. Pam is caught between wanting to fix her son's unhappiness and wanting to please her boyfriend and retain the security their relationship offers. This part of the movie is a little heavy on the emo, but this is balanced out nicely by the Water Wizz scenes with the fast-quipping, happy-go-lucky Owen.

Two small points I learned from IMDb. First, the film was originally written under the title The Way Back (which was the first thing I thought of when I read about it), before being changed to The Way Way Back to avoid confusion. Second, it was originally supposed to be set in the early 1980s, but, for budgetary reasons, ended up being set in the present. The influence of the '80s lingers though: Water Wizz hasn't been upgraded since it was built in 1983; Trent's station wagon is hardly the most modern set of wheels on the road; Owen plays a vintage PacMan arcade game in a café and quotes Bonnie Tyler to the kids queuing up for a ride at the water park; Duncan and his family play what must be the most bitter round of Candy Land ever to have taken place.

The Way Way Back has a very similar feel to The Descendants — right down to the removing of any pleasure or enjoyment from a beautiful beachside setting — and I really enjoyed it. In many ways, its UK end-of-summer release date works well, and the sharp script generated plenty of laughs from the audience, as well as the odd tear (not from me, on this occasion). James was impressive as the introverted teenager who comes out of his shell, but he had good support from Carell (whose character was impressively horrible) and Rockwell, and to some extent Collette.

It's very much an ensemble-cast movie, though. The two writer-directors have small roles as Water Wizz employees (Rash will only ever be Dean Pelton to me). Maya Rudolph makes an appearance as Owen's grumpy assistant manager and would-be lover, and Allison Janney steals many scenes as Betty, the bitter and overly frank, but well-meaning mother of Susanna.

Bank Holiday Brunch (Hangover Optional): The Hangover Club Review

The winning streak of sunny bank-holiday weekends couldn't last, and so of course it was rainy when I woke up yesterday morning. The SoLoDo RC still managed to get a run in, though, because we had to build up an appetite for brunch. The Skyroom in Tooley Street plays host to a dizzying array of eating and drinking experiences organised by Platterform, and on Saturdays from 11 am until 3 pm, it's brunch o'clock, courtesy of The Good Egg's Hangover Club residency.

You don't actually have to have a hangover, of course, and they offer retox as well as detox options. Oh, and Alka-Seltzer.

You need to book in advance via the Hangover Club website, and choose whether you want the 11 am to 1 pm or the 1 to 3 pm sitting. You pay £8 per person in advance, which entitles you to one brunchy main dish, although drinks and any extra food are not included. This makes it a little complicated at bill time, if one person has paid in advance for everyone else's food, but because The Hangover Club only happens once a week, I guess it helps them to make sure they are fully but not overly stocked.

We were a little nervous about the wet-weather facilities given the rooftop location of The Skyroom, but luckily the seating area is completely covered (well, save the odd drip or two), and decorated quirkily with random bird cages, lampshades and a fake grassy floor. It's definitely a cool spot, five storeys above the hustle and bustle of Tooley Street.

On to the brunch. There is an impressive selection of cocktails, as well as juices and smoothies for those not yet ready for the hair of the dog. You don't have to have a bloody mary, but you probably should. I ordered a Bloody Berber — a sort of Moroccan bloody mary with saffron gin, lemon, harissa and mint. It was delicious: peppery, fragrant and very invigorating. If I had had the capacity for a second cocktail, I would have tried the Bacon 'n' Eggs, with bacon-fat-washed bourbon, amontillado sherry, lemon, sugar, egg white and a crispy bacon rasher. I'm not sure whether I would have liked it, but it would have been nice to try, especially as the brunch menu was surprisingly devoid of bacon. Instead, I was good and had a blueberry and strawberry smoothie, which was tasty and made up for the lack of puddings on the menu.

For my main course, I ordered the breakfast burrito, which came stuffed with egg, chorizo, cheese, potato, beans, guacamole and salsa. It was really, really good. Definitely the best breakfast burrito I've had in London, and almost as good as Daddy Donkey's Daddy D on the overall burrito steaks stakes.

One of our friend's friend wasn't able to come, but as we'd already paid for his main course, we all shared the shakshuka — another Moroccan-influenced menu item, which involved poached eggs, a spicy tomato sauce and merguez sausages with sourdough. The shakshuka was good too, although I'm glad I had the burrito as my main course.

The service was a little slow — we were starving by the time the food arrived, especially after our morning run — and my friends mourned the absence of salt and pepper, but I thought the food and drink was great and that it was a really fun bank-holiday-weekend brunch experience. It wasn't as though we were in a rush, either.

The leftovers — or lack thereof.

I'm now keen to go back to one of the other Skyroom experiences — Village East's Sky Canteen, which they are running while their Bermondsey Street restaurant is being refurbished, sounds particularly good.

The Good Egg's Hangover Club Brunch. 5th Floor, Magdalen House, 146 Tooley Street, London, SE1 2TU (Tube: London Bridge). Websites: The Good Egg; The Hangover Club; Platterform.

The Burger Bulletin: Dirty Burger Review

When I came out of the Tube at Vauxhall this evening and was faced with hundreds and hundreds of people, I was worried that they were also heading for Arch 54. I knew that Dirty Burger was popular, you see, and it was entirely plausible that on the first Friday after the opening of its south-of-the-river branch, there would be a queue. Luckily, it turned out that there was just some minor sporting match taking place at The Oval.

I've been meaning to visit Dirty Burger since they had a free burger give-away during their soft launch last year. But although I happened to be working from home that day and even though I was still in Marylebone at the time, Kentish Town was a little too far out of my way for a lunchtime. As such, when I heard they were opening an outpost on the right side of the Thames, I was pretty stoked, even if Vauxhall isn't especially convenient for me. It's a start, right? 

The Vauxhall arches aren't exactly Maltby Street, but Dirty Burger still has a pretty cool location, nestled under the train tracks. It reminded me a lot of Burger Joint — Le Parker Meridien's not-so-secret purveyor of excellent, cheap burgers — in New York, with its shack-like interior and carefully distressed signage. The ownership is similar too, as Dirty Burger is the quick-and-dirty burger shack of the Soho House Group.

They are open all day, so if you go before 11 am, you can have a breakfast sandwich; after 11, it's cheeseburger time. Don't bring your veggie friend; they will not thank you for it. I ordered a cheeseburger and some crinkle-cut fries, which set me back all of £8.50, and went to perch at one of the seats. There are a few stools for perching inside and a handful of tables out front. It's fast food, so the turnover is pretty high, but don't come with a huge group if you want to eat in.

Technically, the staff told me I couldn't have a medium-rare burger, but I asked them to make it as rare as was legal and I wasn't disappointed. The burger, with its soft, slightly sweet bun and flavoursome, juicy patty reminded me a lot of the Shack Burger I had at Shake Shack and of Tommi's Burger Joint's cheeseburger. Next time, I must remember to ask for no tomato or gherkin, but it was a really good burger. The chips were even better: the best chips I've had for a while. They were moist and slightly greasy, but still crispy — almost like a better version of chip-shop chips. The portion was probably big enough to share, but I managed to eat most of them anyway.

To try to offset my dinner, I walked back to Bermondsey. By then, the post-cricket rush had died down and it didn't take as long as I thought. Which just makes it so much easier to start plotting my next visit to Dirty Burger. Dirty — but very, very nice.

Dirty Burger. Arch 54, 6 South Lambeth Road, London, SW8 1SS (Tube: Vauxhall). Website. Twitter.

"I Can't Kill Hitler or Shag Helen of Troy, Unfortunately"

Remember The Butterfly Effect? Ashton Kutcher can travel back in time to revisit events from his own life and tries to make everything better, but, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, reverberating ripples from the titular butterfly effect only spell doom, angst and regret. Well, Richard Curtis has a new film coming out soon, which offers, as you might expect, a very different take on the same concept.

In About Time, we meet Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), our young, ginger hero. He had a happy childhood with his oddball family: his quirky, boho sister Kit Kat (Lydia Wilson), his mum (Lindsay Duncan) whose style icon is the queen, and his dad (Bill Nighy), who retired from his teaching job at the age of 50 for a life of basement ping-pong and picnics on the beach at their sprawling Cornwall manse. Oh, and Uncle Desmond (Richard Cordery), who is a few sandwiches short of the aforementioned picnic.

When Tim turns 21, his father takes him aside and shares a big secret: the men in their family are able to time-travel. They can only travel backwards and only to events from their own lives ("I can't kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy, unfortunately," Dad says), but it's a pretty useful skill to have. After much disbelief, Tim heads for a quiet closet, closes his eyes and flashes back to the New Year's Eve party they held the night before where he failed wildly with a girl. It doesn't go much better the second time around, but the principle has been proven. Sensibly, the film doesn't go into too much detail on the mechanics, rules and potential paradoxes. "We don't seem to have messed up civilisation yet," says Dad.

After striking out with Kit Kat's poshy totty friend Charlotte (Margot Robbie) that summer, Tim heads for the big city, moving in with his father's belligerent playwright friend Harry (a wonderfully grumpy Tom Hollander), working as a barrister and, eventually, meeting a lovely American girl called Mary (Rachel McAdams) at Dans Le Noir. With a little help from his time-travelling skills, life goes well for Tim and, after almost making a big mistake after a chance encounter with Charlotte at the theatre, he does the right thing and returns home to Mary. But Kit Kat doesn't find London life so easy, struggling with alcohol and a toxic relationship. Tim thinks he can use time travel to fix things, but then discovers one of the things his father forgot to tell him: if you travel back to a time before you've had a child, the tiny butterfly-effect ripples would result in a different sperm fertilising the egg and, as a result, you end up with an entirely different child. (For some, this may be desirable, but this is a Richard Curtis film.)

About Time is entirely predictable, trotting out the same cookie-cutter, straight-from-central-casting upper-middle-class characters who always inhabit Curtis's films. It's a very Londony film, but by London, I mean Maida Vale, Fulham, Soho and the Inns of Court, although to be fair to Curtis, Tim does dare to cross the Thames to visit the National Theatre and stroll along the South Bank one evening. None of this really matters, though, because it's all so damn charming — even to a cynic like me. Nighy is great and steals most of the scenes he is in, but I also thought Hollander was brilliant and darkly funny. Meanwhile, Gleeson and McAdams, as our young lovers had good chemistry and were sweet and believable together. I last saw McAdams in her full tantrum-throwing glory in Midnight in Paris, so it was nice to see her back in girl-next-door mode. Incidentally, the epic montage scene that opens Woody Allen's Parisian movie is nicely mirrored by the London montage towards the end of About Time. I don't think it was intentional, but I enjoyed it more.

If you're looking for an edge-of-your-seat thriller with plot twists a-plenty, About Time isn't the film for you. But if you want a fun romp through a very particular perception of London populated with familiar characters, all of whom are much more witty than their real-life equivalents could ever hope for, give it a try. And don't believe the "sci-fi" genre tag. It's a Richard Curtis film, so it's a romantic comedy, of course.

The Cambridge Caffeine Chronicles: Hot Numbers Review

Back in my relatively early days of coffee obsession, when I was at university in Cambridge, I would "treat" myself to a mocha at Nero if I had finished an essay or worked particularly hard. It wasn't as though there were that many other caffeine options at the time. Clowns, an Italian-run café on King Street was all right (better after the smoking ban kicked in), and CB1 on Mill Road (and its more restauranty sister CB2) wasn't too bad, although it was more about the cyber than the coffee.

After I moved to London and discovered a whole new world of gourmet espresso, I realised what I'd been missing out on for all these years. When I was planning my trip to Cambridge on Saturday, I thought I'd do a bit of online research just in case there was an espresso bar where the baristas had at least heard of an Aeropress and where the filter coffee didn't come in an industrial-size vat.

Enter Hot Numbers, an independent coffee bar and micro-roastery on Gwydir Street, just off Mill Road on the south-east side of the city centre. Mill Road is Cambridge's counter-culture enclave, which makes a change from the Starbucks- and tea-shop-filled city centre. They roast their own coffee on site and when I arrived on Saturday lunchtime, I was impressed to find they offered Aeropress, pour-over and siphon filter coffee options, as well as the usual espresso-based drinks.

I had been planning to order my usual double macchiato, as a benchmark, but I couldn't resist the prospect of a good pour-over brew, so I ordered one of those as well. Both drinks came to £4.40 — a refreshing change after London, where you will often pay more than that just for the pour-over. While I waited for my drinks, I admired the surroundings: the café is set up with long wooden tables for sharing, and the customers were a mix of couples, young families and MacBook-toting hipsters. Tasteful artwork adorns the walls — the space used to be a brewery — and they often host live-music events.

As for the coffee, it slipped down very nicely. The filter coffee was a fruity Guatemalan blend that was flavoursome and smooth. The macchiato was, I suspect, made using the El Salvador blend, and it was rich and creamy. It came with a touch more milk than I prefer, but that didn't affect my enjoyment. After reading the espresso menu, with hindsight, I would have tried an espresso with the single-origin Brazilian Pedra Redonda. I guess I'll just have to come back to Cambridge and try it another time.

Hot Numbers does serve food — bacon sarnies on sourdough, smoked salmon bagels, and cakes — but it's telling that the coffee menu is much longer than the breakfast and lunch menu. But if you're a coffee fan in Cambridge and are looking for a spot of light lunch, I recommend you make the short trek to Gwydir Street (there are also plenty of buses from the centre). I just wish Hot Numbers had been there during my six years of living there.

Hot Numbers. Unit 6, Dales Brewery, Gwydir Street, Cambridge, CB1 2LJ. Website. Twitter.

Plus Ça Change: A Return to Cambridge

I can hardly believe it's been two years since my last visit to Cambridge, but since Dr E moved to Australia, I don't really know anyone there. It's a shame because on a lovely summer Saturday, it's a lovely place to be. Yesterday was more autumnal, but it was nice to be back. I was meeting some friends and former colleagues for lunch, but I had half an hour to kill first, so I decided to re-caffeinate. When I lived in Cambridge, there weren't any decent independent espresso bars, but the internets pointed me in the direction of Hot Numbers, just off Mill Road, which I'll review in full soon. Spoiler alert: I was impressed.

Hot Numbers Coffee on Gwydir Street.

Suitably buzzing, I headed for The Emperor on Hills Road. It's not the best pub in a city where there is a lot of competition, but it was fine and served the purpose of providing a venue for three old friends to catch up.

Unfortunately, as I walked into the city centre, the heavens opened and I had left my umbrella at home in favour of my sunglasses. Error. It did stop raining before I reached an umbrella vendor, though, so it could have been worse. Cambridge has a nice little market most days, but I headed for a shop called Ark, just off the market square, which sells girly gifts and homewares. They were playing the same "stereotypical French music" compilation CD as they were on my last visit, several years ago. The song really does remain the same. They also had a nice collection of Italian leather purses, iPad cases and bags in a range of colours. No prizes for guessing which colour I picked.

I then decided to take my new camera for a walk through some of the colleges, flashing my alumni card to gain free entry. King's wasn't as busy as I was expecting; perhaps the rain was putting people off.

King's College Chapel.

I walked along The Backs to my alma mater, St John's. After four years of living in college, I still find myself avoiding walking on grass wherever I go. The ducks, however, remained unconcerned as they paraded in front of New Court.

Meanwhile, the punt-naming committee have made fast work of ensuring that HRH Prince George has a vessel in his honour. And of course, the punt tour guides' stories about the "history" of the university and its colleges were just as inaccurate as the last time I heard them.

After leaving John's, I had another walk around the shops and then headed back to the station, admiring the many colourful front doors on the leafy streets in that part of town.

Front-door porn.

Things I miss about Cambridge:

• The peace and quiet, and lack of smoking.
• Walking through my old college and along The Backs.
• The excellent selection of pubs.
• Lakeland.

Things I don't miss about Cambridge:

• The lack of 3G.
• The killer cyclists.
• The über-persistent punt-tour touts.
• The wind (did you know that there are no mountains between Cambridge and Siberia?)

In a Lonely Place

It's been a while since I read a book that was both gripping and well written. I've already worked my way through most of my to-read list for the Southwark library system and they can be pretty slow to order in new books, so my reading selections have been a bit ad hoc. I enjoyed Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls, a sort of sci-fi, noir thriller set in Chicago at various times during the 20th century, but it wasn't one of those books I would rush home from work to finish. J. Courtney Sullivan's The Engagements, as with her previous two books, was fun and well-observed, if sometimes frothy, and I powered through Waiting for Wednesday, as I have done with all of Nicci French's Frieda Klein series, but it wasn't exactly thought-provoking.

Enter How To Be a Good Wife, Emma Chapman's debut novel. This book has been on my wishlist for a few months and I finally picked it up from the library last week. The title reminded me of a book I read last year, called How To Be an American Housewife, by Margaret Dilloway, which is about a young Japanese woman who meets an American GI during the war and goes back to the States to marry him, guided by a book which shares its name with the title of the novel. If you like The Joy Luck Club and its ilk, you'll probably enjoy Dilloway's novel.

Chapman's book is quite different, both in content and in style, although the protagonist, a middle-aged woman living in an unspecified Scandinavian country, also seeks guidance from an outdated book, How To Be a Good Wife, which was given to her by her mother-in-law. As the novel opens, we can tell that something isn't quite right. Marta's grown son has just left the nest to move in with his girlfriend in the city. Never entirely emotionally stable, Marta now finds herself at an emotional loss. She stops taking her medication, despite the efforts of her much-older husband Hector, who grows increasingly concerned about his wife as she becomes more pensive and vacant, and then seems to lose the plot at a dinner where she meets her son's fiancée for the first time. Marta also starts to see a young blonde girl — sometimes happy and healthy, sometimes sad and bedraggled — but no one else seems to notice her.

As the novel progresses, we start to learn a little more about Marta's past. She met Hector when she was very young and he "saved" her after her parents' tragic death. The trouble is that she can remember almost nothing about her life before Hector or about her parents' death. But is something sinister lurking beneath the surface or is Marta really still suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder? She stops taking her medication to try to find the truth, but what if her unmedicated mind is just creating more problems and failing to arrive at any solutions?

For the reader, the problem is confounded by the fact that the entire novel is narrated in the first-person by Marta herself. We only have her take on events and feelings, and ultimately, when it comes to the ending, it is down to the reader to decide how reliable Marta's testimony is. Chapman wrote the novel — and particularly the ending — this way intentionally, in order to leave it up to the reader. I would have preferred a few more hints as to what the "right" answer might have been.

At only 256 pages, How To Be a Good Wife is fairly concise. It's not a thriller in the Nicci French sense; it's much more subtle than that and sustains an intense sense of unease throughout. It's also quite a lonely novel — Marta is often quite isolated, physically as well as emotionally — and a quiet one. It certainly doesn't have much in common with most of the ubiquitous Scandi-thrillers. Haunting, sad and ethereally beautiful, How To Be A Good Wife poses a lot more questions than it answers, but the themes of love, loss and memory have resonated with me since I finished reading it.

To Bea or Not To Bea

Because Bea's Diner is only open at the weekends and because even I can only manage so many pancakes each month, it's nice to have other Bea's of Bloomsbury breakfast options. They have just opened a new branch near Farringdon station on Cowcross Street. It's the petite Tiffany-blue shop next to the station. This is how close it is to Farringdon station:

Bea's of Bloomsbury's Farringdon store.

Two of my friends work nearby and it's also about three-quarters of the way along my journey to work, so we decided to meet there for an important business meeting breakfast on Friday morning. The first thing I realised when I arrived is that this branch of Bea's is so small, there is definitely no room for any seats inside. There is a bench outside, but it was raining so heavily that even sheltering under copies of yesterday's Evening Standard couldn't keep us dry.

We had bigger problems, though. Namely what to choose for breakfast. Every time someone described one of the tasty treats to me, I kept changing my mind. I adore Bea's blondies and the chocolate chip banana bread also looked good, but in the end I went for a duffin. It was the right thing to do after my recent cronut failure.

A duffin is a doughnut-muffin hybrid. It's shaped like a muffin and made from muffiny cake, but has a jammy centre and is deep fried and dunked in sugar. Pretty sinful. Pretty damn tasty too. For me, a custard or chocolate filling would have made it even better, but I was happy.

Sweet duffins.

Bea's also serves Square Mile coffee, so I washed down my duffin with an impressively strong and smooth double mac.

And coffee too!

I probably shouldn't make it too regular a breakfast date, but it's the perfect occasional treat after a hard week.

Bea's of Bloomsbury. 43 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6BY (Tube: Farringdon). Website. Twitter.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Notes at Tileyard Review

Update: Notes' Tileyard Studios branch is closed, but you can visit their other branches in King's Cross and Trafalgar Square.

King's Cross is full of surprises. I suppose it always has been, but now they tend to be good surprises. Since the sad demise of the Brewhouse on York, I've been at a bit of a coffee loose end in N1, because I can't go to Caravan every day, more's the pity. But when I visited Notes in Covent Garden a few months ago, I discovered that they had a north London outpost. I was put off by the N7 postcode, but it turned out to be only a ten-minute walk up York Way from my office. You can get the 390 bus on York Way, outside King's Cross station, but it shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes. Just go past Grauniad Towers...

And past the long disused York Road Tube station...

Then turn right when you get the 'Apothecary' sign on Vale Royal. You may think you're going the wrong way, but if you persist, you'll reach Tileyard Studios — a "music and media hub." This means you overhear conversations like, "We've got Paul Young and Nik Kershaw," while you sip your coffee.

You can sit inside — the design is pretty similar to the two central London branches of Notes — but on both of my visits, it has been gloriously sunny, so I've sat out on the lovely terrace. What with the showbiz types and the sunshine, you can almost imagine you're in LA. Well, this summer, anyway.

Notes Coffee's Tileyard outpost, near King's Cross.

As with the other Notes cafés, there is a selection of sandwiches, salads and frittatas if you need more sustenance than a coffee. And judging by their Twitter feed, they sometimes do burgers. Last time, I ate the chicken, bacon and cranberry baguette, which was great and very filling.

On both occasions, I ordered my usual double skinny macchiato, and it was good. A little on the milky side for my liking, but rich and smooth, like at its sister cafés. The intense midday sunshine on both of my visits did, however, make my coffee photography a little tricky. It's a small sacrifice for a lunchtime that transports you far away from darkest not-even-really-King's-Cross.

Double skinny macchiato at Notes.

Notes. 6A Tileyard Studios, London, N7 9AH (Tube: King's Cross or Caledonian Road & Barnsburg Overground). Website. Twitter.