Café 1001, Spitalfields

Café 1001

91 Brick Lane

Spitalfields

E1 6QL (on corner of Dray Walk)

by Marge E. Reen

Breakfast ordered: Full English

Cost: £6

Time: 9 am Sunday morning.

Weather conditions: Hot and humid.

Location: Bench in alley off Brick Lane leading towards Rough Trade East. In the evenings Café 1001 is always heaving with drunk people eating burgers and fried chicken from the outdoor grill but at this hour it was sleepily quiet, too early for the hipster hordes to have surfaced. 

Service: Charmless. 

Forensic analysis

Exhibit A (sausage): Looked like a pallid penis in a ripped condom. Barely browned, microwaved, dubious pink colour. When I complained the manager insisted it was ‘a very nice Cumberland sausage’ despite all visual and gustatory evidence to the contrary.

Exhibit B (eggs):  Bone dry, leathery and not scrambled, which was what I had asked for, although the waitress/cook insisted I hadn’t.

Exhibit C (tomato): Hard, unforgiving and had only glimpsed a frying pan.

Exhibit D (coffee): Piss-weak.

Exhibit E (beans): The sauce had a mealy, furry quality, which suggested this item had been cooked a while before and reheated, possibly several times. 

Exhibit F (bacon): Overcooked but passable. About the only thing they didn’t manage to entirely screw up apart from...

Exhibit G (mushrooms): Decent, but could not compensate for the fact that my stomach had been utterly turned by Exhibits A and B.

Exhibit H (white toast): I sent my breakfast back before I got a chance to taste this but I don’t imagine this café is capable of toasting bread properly.

Verdict: Guilty of serving badly-cooked, borderline inedible food. After a brief (and relatively restrained) confrontation with the manager I got a refund. I hope my case for the prosecution has persuaded you not to go to this café. One of the worst breakfasts I have ever attempted to eat. I did consider forcing myself to finish it as I was hungry but I feared I would get food poisoning from the sausage, or something worse.