Eat: souper?

No snobbery, just good soups.

I don't understand people who bring in sandwiches to work. If you are desperately close to losing your house, or owe a lot of money to some very bad people, sure. But there is no justification for putting yourself through cheese and dry bread hell when you can pop out to a decent cafe and get something better.

That didn't always used to be possible. Some of the more secondary business parks still rely on Frank's burger van. But even his livelihood is under threat now, because of the rise of "gastro-coffee shop" (my term).

Starbucks, Costa, Cafe Nero... they all offer proper lunch now: wrapped-up sandwiches the likes of which only used to be seen in a Hampstead delhi; pastries that have left Patisserie Valerie wanting to change her name; cookies the size of plates. Oh, and bad coffee.

But these are expensive. Very expensive. So the  "coffee-house bistro" reared its head. Eat, Pret and Pod all offer sandwiches to rival Borough market; cakes that make Konditor & Cook squabble between themselves; even hot meals that are, if nothing else, hot. Oh, and shit coffee.

I used to think Eat was expensive too. Their salads are around £4.50, which is a lot for some over-cooked prawns, limp lettuce leaves and sweet chilli sauce. But then I tried the soups.

Some of them are extraordinary. They top their chicken and mushroom cream soup with flaky pastry; their sweet potato and chilli soup is like a hug in a mug; their chicken laksa spicy, sweet and fresh. They even manage to bat the classic cream of chicken out of the park. They must have a repertoire of 20 or so soups, which rotate weekly.

You don't expect to walk into their cold, clinical units and receive food of this quality. At my local Eat they leave the door open constantly, letting the winter wind whip right through to the back door. It's irritating, but it has a certain effect. People huddle over the their soups for warmth, which is kind of the way that's how soup should be enjoyed. Cradling the tub with fingerless gloves, enjoying the rising steam and inhaling the scent like you're in Bisto advert.

There are flaws of course. The Chicken Pot Pie pastry is impossible to eat with a spoon, it is usually served just a little too cold and the descriptions are infuriating - they serve an "Eat classic" every day.

But it's all so reasonably priced. The large, which is about a pint, is only £4.35 but the smallest is barely over £3, and for a few pence you can get a doorstop of bread to make sure that, if the small spoons didn't manage it, you'll dribble soup all down your chin.

Joe's cafe: not for builders

Joe’s Cafe rather under sells itself. It sounds like a builders’ cafe where the dress code is high vis jackets and paint stained trackies.

I can assure you that you would not make it through the door dressed like that – despite it being 12 foot wide. Joe’s is actually a subtle and beautiful restaurant. A book case runs through the centre, punctuated with the occasional 50-year-old bottle of wine or Vogue collection from the 80s.

The tables are spread out and the service relaxed. Money here is made slowly, in stark contrast to its Kensington clientele. We ummed and erred over the wine list, starters and mains. Even deciding between sparkling and still water took five minutes, during which our tireless waiter looked busy at the table behind us.

I started with fois gras on a mushroom wafer topped with sour cherries. This was rather hard to eat, being unstab-able and too wide to balance on the fork. So by the time it reached my mouth it was more like sour cherries, topped with fois gras and mushroom pastry shards. Still, the dish was appreciated for its sweet and sourness, even if the texture was all together too watery.

For the main I had water trout (what other kind is there?) with a French tartare sauce and a cold salmon, almost sushi-esque roll with an horseradish base. To be honest it was felt foreign on the plate, distracting me from the wonderful trout and if I hadn’t been famished would have been left well alone. However, the course was served with the first truly tolerable form of fried cauliflower I have ever tasted, and all it took was the addition of lemongrass.

As is the case in all good restaurants, my memory of the pudding is a little hazy. We had finished a bottle of wine before even choosing our food. Nonetheless my pudding choice was inspired. My raspberry baseless cheese cake was sweet and decadent, and looked a lot like a maoam, a hallucination helped by the fact that it was surrounded by cubes of raspberry jelly. The rubber texture juxtaposed the maoam nicely, and bizarrely added a drier flavour to the very sweet dish.

And so we enjoyed a final bottle of wine after the meal, staring through the missing wall that Joe’s calls a door, at the torrential rain we had to head into. The food is nothing special here, but there is an honesty to it; a kind of aspiring decadence that it never quite lives up to. But in the quiet and welcoming room and with a hearty wine from the Alsace inside you, you’ll never want to leave.




126 Draycott Avenue, South Kensington, London, SW3 3AH
020 7225 2217