The Caffeine Chronicles: Workshop Coffee, Clerkenwell (CLOSED)

UPDATE: Sadly, Workshop's Clerkenwell cafe is now permanently closed, but you can still visit them in their Belgravia coffee shop.

It's hard to ignore the presence of Workshop Coffee in the London specialty coffee scene. There are three coffee bars and a café in their small chain, but more than that, you can spot their house-roasted coffees in many of the coffee shops around the city. 

I often visit the Marylebone coffee bar, now located on Barrett Street although in its former life, it was known as The Sensory Lab and was based just around the corner on Wigmore Street. I've frequented the Clerkenwell Road café less frequently and in fact, the last time it featured on this blog, it was still called St Ali, although about to be rebranded as Workshop, along with its sister coffee shop.

This is a long way of introducing my recent return to Workshop's Clerkenwell Road café. I had forgotten how much I loved the place and I had a very enjoyable brunch. Figuring that the café was likely to be busy at Saturday brunchtime, even on a rainy September day, I arrived just before noon. 

Most of the tables were already occupied but I managed to nab a seat at the central coffee bar (not dissimilar to that in Portland's Case Study), which is a great place to sit, especially with baristas as friendly and charming as at Workshop. The non-bar seating is around a series of high, wooden sharing tables; there is also more space upstairs, although I didn't go up to take a look.

It is one of London's most beautifully designed cafés — I love the central coffee bar, but the pendant light bulbs add a cosy glow to what might otherwise be a slightly dark space, and the living wall, back near the poster boards that provide information about Workshop's roasting process, is a welcome addition. 

The various Workshop coffee spots use different types of espresso machine, but they are all unified by their gold 'Workshop Coffee Co' customisation on the front (the powder-blue Synesso in the Marylebone branch is still my favourite).

I ordered a filter coffee while I made up my mind about what to eat. I went for a Kagumoini coffee from Kenya, brewed through the Aeropress (£4), which was sweet and citrusy, with the flavour notes growing more intense as the coffee cooled.

The brunch menu included a lot of classic brunch dishes and, intriguingly, a burger. It's rare to get the opportunity to have a really good burger alongside a great cup of coffee, but I wasn't quite hungry enough this time — the barista told me that it was a real beast of a burger. Instead, I went for the eggs Benedict with smoked ham (£9.50). The eggs were done just right and the ham really tasty; the Hollandaise sauce was quite tart, but I like it that way.

Finally, for 'pudding', I had a piccolo, brewed with Hunkute coffee from Ethiopia, which was brewed perfectly, with a rich, smooth taste and characteristically lovely latte art. If you have more of an appetite than me and have room for pudding, they also have St John doughnuts, but I always think that coffee is the best way to round off a meal.

Afterwards, I browsed the selection of coffees available for purchase and picked up a bag of Loma Linda pulped natural beans (£9.50), which I've been enjoying at home in my Aeropress all week. Aren't their new ceramic cups lovely too?

This visit really cemented Workshop's position in my list of top London coffee bars, and the Clerkenwell café is also one of my favourite places in the city for brunch. Although I've been to their Holborn branch a few times, their Fitzrovia location has still eluded me; another one to add to the list.

Workshop Coffee. 27 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RN (Tube: Farringdon). Website. Instagram.

For 150+ more of my favourite coffee shops in London, check out my London specialty coffee guide.

At Som Saa, East Meets East London

I never managed to visit Som Saa in its original location in Climpson's Arch near London Fields in Hackney, but it was hard to ignore the widespread acclaim the restaurant, which specialises in regional Thai dishes and cocktails, attracted. Earlier this year, they moved to a permanent location on Commercial Street in Spitalfields — a short walk from Liverpool Street station. 

Som Saa has clearly survived the transition — more than survived, in fact, and it recently made the top ten of Time Out's top 100 London restaurants, an impressive feat for a restaurant that has been open less than six months.

The only trouble is that most of Som Saa's tables are reserved for walk-ins, which can mean a long wait at peak times. The wait itself isn't really a problem if you aren't in a hurry as there is a gorgeous, well-stocked bar whose cocktails will keep you happy until a table becomes available. 

There are also a few booths that can be booked for parties of four, five and six people, and by happy coincidence, when looking for a place for an early supper for my family on Monday, they had a reservation available for four people at 6 pm. As it turned out, the restaurant wasn't too busy at 6 pm, so we would probably have been fine without a reservation; by the time we left, however, a not insubstantial queue had formed.

The restaurant itself is in a lovingly converted former fabric warehouse. The first room houses the bar, a few high tables and several booths; the kitchen and some additional tables are in the larger back room. The décor is minimalist: rustic wooden tables and booths, sleek pendant lighting and tasteful foliage.

I had heard good things about the cocktails and I wasn't disappointed. I had the Muay Thai Kick (£9), which combines gin, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaf, basil seeds and lime. It was fruity and delicious, sharp and sweet, the basil seeds adding some nice texture. I also tried some of my brother's Krahang Old Fashioned (smoked bourbon, bitters, mandarin peel and palm sugar), which was smooth and intense. 

Later on, intrigued by its listing on the menu, I ordered a popcorn iced tea (£3), which was literally that: iced tea with popcorn stacked on the ice. It was a little random but a surprisingly fun soft drink.

Deciding what to eat was trickier because although the staff recommend ordering four to five dishes per two people, I wanted to try pretty much everything on the menu. Between four of us we ordered eight dishes from various sections of the menu, which encompasses soups, salads, woks, grills and curries. Along with jasmine and sticky rice (£2.50 per person), this was more than enough food — we could have dropped one of the dishes, I think, but it was nice to try so many different foods and, to be fair, we came close to finishing everything.

Although we shared everything, each of us selected two dishes from the menu. I went for one of the wok dishes, the pad dtok guichai (stir-fried chicken with chrysanthemum leaves, garlic chives and yellow beans; £8.50), and a salad: the som tam thai (green papaya with snake beans, dried shrimp, peanuts and cherry tomato; £9). The former was one of my favourite dishes of the night — an interesting variation on the ubiquitous pad thai — and the salad, while very spicy, was a great take on the dish.

We also sampled two of the curries on the menu: the gaeng hung lay (a Burmese-style curry with pork belly; £12.50) and the gaeng panang neua kem (braised salted beef and Thai basil; £13.50). The meat in both curries was beautifully cooked — the braised beef had that melt-in-the-mouth quality and the flavours of the gaeng hung lay came together perfectly. 

Another winner was the gai yaang (£7), grilled chicken leg with tamarind dipping sauce, which was juicy and moreish. I didn't try the pad pak (stir-fried vegetables; £8) as it was laced with mushrooms but my family enjoyed it. Naturally, we didn't have room for pudding, but as I mentioned in my review of the other Thai restaurant I visited recently, I'm not a huge fan of most Southeast Asian desserts.

Even early on a Monday evening, Som Saa was buzzing and had a cool but relaxed vibe. The staff were friendly and attentive and we had a wonderful evening. In fact, the cocktails were impressive enough that I would go for a drink even if I wasn't planning to eat or couldn't get a table! The hype is real: get thee to Commercial Street pronto.

Som Saa. 43a Commercial Street, London, E1 6BD (Tube: Liverpool Street or Aldgate East). Website. Instagram.

"You Can't Go Wrong Being Yourself" — Loner Review

David Federman, the eponymous loner in Teddy Wayne's new novel, would be the perfect match for Lee Fiora, a few years after the events in Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Ironically, though, although both characters are awkward outsiders — arrivistes who have little in the way of self-awareness or social awareness — they would probably loathe each other. Each would consider the other to be an unworthy match and to lack social-climbing potential.

Loner opens as David arrives at Harvard with his parents on his first day. David is smart and ambitious but spent most of his teenage years in his bedroom in his nondescript New Jersey hometown. He has a habit of mumbling and a nervous tic for reversing words. Harvard is his chance to reinvent himself as a brilliant scholar and a popular student. At last, he thinks, he will fit in.

But on the first day, he meets Veronica — witty, wealthy, sophisticated and effortlessly beautiful — and falls for her instantly, drawing comparisons with Juliet, Dante’s Beatrice and Helen of Troy. He soon formulates a plan to get to know her and, he hopes, win her over. 

Conveniently, Sara, one of his new friends — a group of fellow misfits — happens to be Veronica's roommate and suddenly David sees the potential of growing closer to Sara. But how far will he go in his efforts to seduce Veronica and avenge his younger, lonelier self? Is he destined to be a loner or might Harvard be the perfect place for David to find a niche for himself?

Wayne's novel is hard to read at times — as novels with difficult, unlikeable central characters often are — but despite David's actions, which range from cringe-worthy and thoughtless, to unpleasant and downright deplorable, you can't help but admire his drive, determination and self-belief. It soon emerges that David's narrative — written in the second person singular, the 'you' in question being Veronica — may not be entirely reliable. 

The reasons for this become clearer as the novel progresses but certainly, although he is clearly intelligent, he is unlikely to be the extraordinary scholar he would have us (or, rather, Veronica) believe. And it's easy for us to read between the lines in his social interactions and spot the vast gulf between David's perceptions and the reality. We also notice when he steals dialogue from other characters — a witty one-liner or a brilliant academic insight — to try to impress others; he always seems to miss the mark, however.

In some ways, David is reminiscent of Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher's The Social Network. David shares the social awkwardness and apparent lack of empathy with Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg, but he lacks the unique vision and talent that allowed Zuckerberg to go on to create the world’s largest social network. “We were studious,” David says in a rare moment of self-awareness, “but not collectively brilliant enough to be nerds, nor sufficiently specialized to be geeks.” 

Yet there are similar exchanges, some of which relate to Harvard — the clarification that Harvard’s elite social clubs are ‘final clubs’ not ‘finals clubs’ and the scouring of the freshmen student directory (the facebook) — and others which are more individual, such as the scene that mirrors the end of Fincher’s film in which the central character hovers over the ‘add friend’ button on Facebook and then agonises over the outcome of the request. 

The three lies of the John Harvard statue come up again here too, and that’s fine because as well as being a highly engaging character study, Wayne’s novel is an insightful campus novel. Just as I love to read novels or watch films set in my own alma mater, Cambridge, I enjoy finding out about the Harvard experience, the lore and the in-jokes that constitute the Harvard mystique, along with the learning and the privilege. 

Still, it takes a certain talent to make readers want to know more about — and even to root for — someone as hard to like as David, and Loner is acutely observed: sometimes sad but more often wry and funny. The denouement is unexpected and yet, with hindsight, just right.

Disclaimer: Loner will be published by Simon & Schuster on 13 September 2016. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Super Bowl: The Begging Bowl, Peckham

Bellenden Road in Peckham is one of the loveliest streets in London. Running roughly parallel to the bustling Rye Lane, it is home to a couple of dozen independent restaurants, cafés and shops: Anderson & Co is one of my favourite brunch spots and Flock and Herd is an outstanding butcher, to name but two. Yet somehow, although I have heard great things about The Begging Bowl since I moved to south-east London, I only got round to eating there last weekend.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Fernandez & Wells Revisited (CLOSED)

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Fernandez & Wells is now permanently closed.

With its fantastic Beak Street location, right in the heart of Soho, Fernandez & Wells was one of the first specialty coffee shops I discovered in London and is the latest to feature in my 'Caffeine Chronicles...Revisited' series. The Beak Street branch is the second location in what is now a mini-empire of cafés. It opened up in spring 2007, shortly after its elder sibling — just around the corner in Lexington Street — which focuses on wine, bread, cheese and cured meats.

I first visited Fernandez & Wells in late in 2007 and it has featured briefly on this blog on numerous occasions, including my first list of top London coffee shops back in 2011. But somehow, I never quite got around to giving it a full write-up. I often suggest the Beak Street café as a meeting point in Soho for friends, family and visitors to London, partly because the coffee is good and partly because it's a very cosy, welcoming place. 

Some specialty coffee shops can be a little intimidating if you don't know the lingo, but Fernandez & Wells keeps things relatively simple. There aren't hand-brewed filter coffees on offer, just espresso-based drinks made using a special Has Bean blend. Newbies may, however, be baffled by the 'stumpy' on the coffee menu, which is, essentially, a small flat white (although bigger than a piccolo).

In the absence of a pourover, I usually order a double macchiato or a piccolo (both are £2.60), and the baristas brew a reliably good coffee. On my most recent visit, I enjoyed a very fine piccolo while doing some research for my upcoming trip to Stockholm. If you haven't brought your own reading material, Fernandez & Wells has an always well-stocked magazine rack to help keep you entertained.

With my coffee, I had a slice of sourdough banana bread (£2.60). I didn't get it toasted but the bread was very tasty anyway. The brownies are usually good too, although the brandy and prune variety available last week weren't really my thing. If you are in need of more sustenance, there are usually a few sandwiches on offer, which are huge and tasty. There are a few breakfast dishes too but I'm rarely in Soho in the mornings.

The café itself is long and narrow with a high table that runs along the wall opposite the coffee bar. The best seats in the house, though, are those in the window where Beak Street provides some excellent people-watching opportunities. It's not surprising that those stools can be so hard to come by when they make lingering all too desirable.

The original Fernandez & Wells cafés now have four sisters in: nearby Denmark Street; Duke Street (Mayfair); Somerset House on the Strand; and Exhibition Road in South Ken. They all have great locations, but I'm still loyal to the Beak Street branch.

Fernandez & Wells. 73 Beak Street, London, W1F 9SR (Tube: Piccadilly Circus or Oxford Circus).

A Refreshing Brunch at Peckham Refreshment Rooms (CLOSED)

My girls' brunch club and I had all been wanting to check out the Peckham Refreshment Rooms (CLOSED) for an age but somehow never quite got round to going until last Sunday. The restaurant, located just off frenetic Rye Lane on the calmer Blenheim Grove, has won plaudits for its seasonal, regional food and for its bustling but relaxed atmosphere.

The lunch and dinner menus focus offer a cornucopia of small plates, including creative combinations like the confit duck leg, pickled cherries, bitter leaf salad. There is a weekend brunch menu too but we were also able to order from the breakfast menu, which is served until 3:30 at the weekend. 

If you are in the mood for a more traditional brunch dish, the breakfast menu is probably the best place to start, although even there, you will usually find a continental twist to a classic dish — Burford Brown eggs with Merguez sausages or Alsace bacon, for instance. 

The brunch menu, meanwhile, featured the very-tempting culaccia ham, pickles and sourdough, and the grilled mackerel with Ratte potato salad. NB, if you are a philistine like me, you will probably need to look up at least one ingredient in every dish!

In the end, I decided to go classic and ordered the fried eggs with Alsace bacon (£7). Served with a good portion of delicious sourdough bread and a hunk of butter, the eggs and especially the bacon tasted great. The bacon was just crispy enough and was very flavoursome. I could have eaten a whole loaf of the bread and luckily, one of my friends ordered a basket o'bread, which we all 'helped' her with. 

Most of the other ladies went for the salt beef sandwich (£7) from the brunch menu, which was, by all accounts, good, although the portion size was a little smaller than expected. Given the price, though, we agreed that the dishes were good value — especially compared to what you might pay for similar dishes in Shoreditch or Soho.

You won't find anything as obvious as a bloody mary or Bellini on the brunch drinks menu at the Refreshment Rooms. I really wanted to order the lavender honey lemonade (£3), because although lavender in food can be divisive, I love it; unfortunately, though, they were all out of lavender syrup. 

Instead, I 'settled' for a pink grapefruit juice with Campari (£5), which was tart, refreshing (no pun intended) and followed Bex's First Law of Cocktail Ordering (if in doubt, choose the pink drink). The other boozy drink on the brunch menu — white port and tonic — wasn't really my thing, but there's also a bigger cocktail list on the main menu.

The restaurant itself is bright and airy and the décor casual with an artsy twist. Stools surround the central counter and in the restaurant's main room, there are small wooden tables and church chairs. It's a lovely all-day neighbourhood restaurant with excellent food and great ambience. I hope to return again soon for dinner.

We wanted to go for a post-brunch cocktail at Frank's but as it was a bank-holiday weekend, the weather was legally obliged to be inconsistent and so we sought refuge in John the Unicorn, a newish pub on Rye Lane. They have a great gin list — I stuck local and had a Little Bird G&T and then a Jensen's G&T — as well as funky décor...and unicorns! It's always great to discover another fun but relaxed neighbourhood watering hole.

Peckham Refreshment Rooms. Unit 3 & 4, 12–16 Blenheim Grove, London, SE15 4QL (Peckham Rye Overground). CLOSED

John the Unicorn. 159 Rye Lane, London, SE15 4TL (Peckham Rye Overground). Website.

Etc — August 2016

1. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott's latest novel, You Will Know Me, which is set in the world of competitive gymnastics, is an ideal read for anyone mourning the end of this year's Olympic Games. 15-year-old Devon Knox is about to qualify as a Senior Elite gymnast, which would put her one hop from the US national team and just two skips from the Olympic team. 

Since she was three years old, her whole life has been focused around achieving this goal since with an uncommon drive and single-mindedness, and her parents Katie and Eric have done everything they can to support, encourage and finance their 'extraordinary' daughter's ambition and talent. But in run-up to the qualification, a violent accident throws shockwaves through the community, threatening to destroy Devon's hard work and the sacrifices her family have made to propel her into the top spot.

You Will Know Me is told through the perspective of Katie as she becomes drawn into the investigation of the accident, and the novel is a compelling and suspenseful story of ambition and love, posing the question of what a parent wouldn't do to help their child achieve her dreams. There isn't as much gymnastics in the novel as I would have liked — the novel focuses more on what it takes to be a top-level gymnast (or her parent) and the relationships among the gymnasts' families — but the story is nonetheless taut and addicting.


2. Stranger Things

I'm a little late to the party on this but if you haven't already checked out the Netflix series Stranger Things, I would highly recommend that you do. The series opens in the month of my birth, November 1983, in a small Indiana town. A 12-year-old boy vanishes and the police, his mother and his friends begin to investigate. Winona Ryder, who plays the boy's mother, gets top billing but it's the young cast (especially Mille Bobby Brown as Eleven) who really impress. 

Moreover, the show seamlessly melds genres, from horror and sci-fi, to political thriller and mystery, with a hefty dose of inspiration from classic 1980s films. If you like Stephen King or John Carpenter, you'll probably love Stranger Things.


3. FM-84

This music recommendation follows on quite neatly from Stranger Things because California-based FM-84's blend of 1980s-inspired synth pop would slot in nicely to the show's soundtrack — or Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, another Netflix series, for that matter. I particularly like the song Running in the Night, which features vocals from Ollie Wride, but I've been listening to the whole album (Atlas) repeatedly over the past month. It's a great soundtrack for summer. You can download the music from Bandcamp.

4. Undertow by Elizabeth Heathcote

In Elizabeth Heathcote's gripping psychological thriller, freelance journalist Carmen struggles with demons from the past — her husband Tom's demons, to be more precise. Tom has three children from his first marriage to Laura, a practical and self-assured fellow lawyer, but it's his relationship with Zena, the beautiful but troubled woman for whom he left Laura, that is still creating ripples even three years after Zena drowned in the sea. 

Carmen's freelance career is floundering and she must also deal with the challenge of being a step-mother to Tom's children, when she begins to discover that her husband seems to have been keeping secrets from her. Secrets that could shatter her marriage — and her whole world.

Although Undertow loses pace during the middle section, the opening is smart and intriguing and the dramatic conclusion is suspenseful and surprising. Carmen is a sympathetic character but sometimes felt like a bit of a cipher — a means to tell an interesting story about other characters.

I also wondered whether it was a coincidence that Zena nearly shares a name with the eponymous robber bride Zenia in Margaret Atwood's novel. Heathcote really captures the essence of the places in her novel — both the beautiful Norfolk coast (the sea itself being a catalyst and having a constant, looming presence) and Carmen and Tom's southeast London neighbourhood, and Undertow is a well-plotted and clever mystery.

Disclaimer: Undertow will be published by Quercus on 1 September 2016. I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

5.  A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto

Seicho Matsumoto, who died in 1992, is widely acclaimed as one of Japan's best crime novelists. His work came to my attention when a new English translation by Louise Heal Kawai of his 1976 novel Kikanakatta Basho (A Quiet Place) was published earlier this year. The novel centres on Tsuneo Asai, a modest and precise government bureaucrat who learns that his wife has died suddenly while he is on a business trip. 

Although his wife had a heart condition and, as such, for her to die of a heart attack wasn't entirely unexpected, the circumstances surrounding her death do not seem to quite ring true to Tsuneo and he begins to investigate. Matsumoto's novel is meticulous in its execution and a wonderfully controlled piece of writing — even as events begin to spiral out of control, he maintains the suspense without deviating into the realms of hyperbole or hysteria.

A Quiet Place is as much of a character study of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances as it is a crime thriller and it is the perfect antidote to the numerous books whose jackets proclaim them to be 'the new Gone Girl' or 'the new Girl on the Train'. Although it was written and set in the 1970s, it hasn't become dated and you can really see how the writer (and translator) have taken great care in choosing each word so that it is exactly right.