The Broca Food Market & Coffee Shop

Sunday, by rights, should be a lazy day. While more than willing to embrace it as a “day of rest”, we also had absolutely no fresh food in the house. Last weekend, that meant we had to go to the Sainsbury’s near New Cross Gate. Obviously it’s not very far, but somewhere not requiring public transport to get to would be preferable. Fortunately, [Brockley Central] recently mentioned the Broca Food Market, an establishment that we were previously unaware of, and being five minutes’ walk away, seemed perfect.

I have to say, I prefer it to “traditional” (i.e. large, chain) supermarkets. The produce is local, fresh and (I think?) organic – and better yet, it seems to have personality. I quite like misshapen veg, and am pretty flexible about substituting for what I can’t find.

Our shopping list mostly had fruit and veg on it; in the run-up to Thanksgiving (yes, I’m American… sort of) we’re not going to be cooking much – this week is pretty busy, we’re out many of the evenings, and I’m going to be at my folks’ place on Friday and Saturday helping to cook a feast for 30 people. We didn’t need anything from the meat or dairy sections, but what we saw of them looked promising. And okay, the bananas looked a little tired (not unexpected on a Sunday afternoon, 2 days from the previous re-stock, I suspect), but just about everything else on our list was there, good quality, and MUCH cheaper than expected. Our shopping, which filled up my (30 litre) rucksack and a sizeable shopping sack, was under £20. Included in that was a loaf of granary bread baked by Flour Power City Bakery (which has a stall at Borough Market that I love, since if you turn up towards the end of the day, they sometimes give you freebies in addition to your purchase) and some free-range eggs, as well as all the veg and fruit. I rather suspect it would have cost considerably more in Sainsbury’s.

The shop sells a wide range of “dry” food goods as well, many of them organic, and some are fairly pricey, but probably because you’re paying for quality and expensive ingredients, such as the hazelnut butter that I was eyeing... I was actually looking for almond butter, but it doesn’t seem to want to be found in Britain. If it’s not there next weekend, though, I’ll just ask one of the folks working there – it seems they take note of requests, and I know that the company that makes the hazelnut butter they had also makes almond butter. I was also heartened by the range of baking ingredients on the shelves – lots of exciting-looking flours in particular. I see spelt bread in my future!

Anyway, after a quick stop in the shop next door (an off-licence/conventional small grocery store, another point in the Broca Market’s favour – if they don’t have something, next door is likely to and vice versa) to get the tinned chickpeas we’d been unable to find, we went back in the direction of Degustation, which I’ll review another time, and to The Broca coffee shop.

Dinner that night was to be a French-style meal of good bread, cheese, pate and salads, so we didn’t want a proper lunch, just something to tide us over. Coffee and cake were just the ticket. Now, I know people say that the coffee is better at Browns of Brockley (and it certainly is good, I’ll give it that), but what we had at The Broca was pretty darn good too. I love the mismatched collection of cups and saucers, and the art on the walls was pretty (and at almost tempting prices… but we need to buy a freezer before we start shelling out on frivolities), and I want to steal their sofa, it’s so comfortable. JP got a slice of densely fragrant carrot cake, topped with a generous layer of cream cheese icing (mmm) and I snagged a slice of Bakewell tart, something I will only ever eat if it’s made by people who know that there is no place for anything other than almonds, egg whites and confectioner’s sugar in marzipan. This fit the bill nicely, had a tasty strawberry jam in it, rather than cherry, and a pleasantly biscuity crust. I almost never buy cakes or sweets (if I’m going to eat sugary things, it’s usually better to make them myself), but I felt pretty satisfied with choosing to be bad this once.

Chapters @ Blackheath

It's been a pretty busy few weeks - between moving, black belt gradings, work and so on, there's not been much time to relax. JP's folks came down on Saturday to deliver some much-needed furniture that they'd been storing (two desks, a bookshelf, a chest of drawers) and so we took them out to brunch to compensate for the 4 (!) hours they had to spend driving from Northampton to South London and back. JP chose Chapters All Day Dining in Blackheath as our destination.

Now, I've lived in in Hampstead Garden Suburb for the last 16 years (on and off), so you'll have to forgive me the North-of-the-river references, but Blackheath reminded me of nothing so much as the Highgate of South London. It's full of cute, boutique-y shops and restaurants that we could never hope to patronise regularly, and the house prices in the estate agents' windows were something scandalous. But it was fun to visit, and might feature in our Christmas-shopping travels later on. But rest assured, we will not be driving there on a Saturday again. Our reservation at Chapters was for 12.30; we arrived at about 12.50. This was mostly due to adverse parking conditions.

The waiter was sympathetic, though, and commiserated on the weekend traffic issues. After perusing the menus and asking our waitress for another couple of minutes to decide (she came to ask us for drinks orders 30 seconds after we sat down...), when we indicated we were ready to order, she decided to read the day's specials off the clearly visible board nearby. Couldn't that have been done the first time she came by? But I digress.

Two baskets plump with steaming-fresh bread were plunked down, along with a rather-too-cold pat of butter. Evidently we'd all skipped breakfast, because the bread was demolished rather swiftly. It was very good - two types of wholegrain, and a sourdough, all clearly handmade and fine quality.

Although we'd been warned that food would take 25-30 minutes (but at least that's a sign it was being made to order), evidently as a bid to get us to go for a starter (no dice), it seemed to turn up pretty quickly. Between the five of us, we had only ordered 3 unique dishes - HAJ & JP's dad went for tagliatelle with wild mushrooms and rocket salad, and JP and his mum ordered the venison burger with chips. My partridge leg with new potatoes and cabbage turned out to be most of the partridge, something I was not about to complain about - the legs were beautifully juicy and flavourful, and the breast had been protected by a couple of slices of streaky bacon. Liberally doused with a rich jus, it was really extremely tasty. JP and I swapped dishes halfway (something we habitually do, even in really good restaurants - that way you get twice the experience), and although the burger was perhaps a bit well-done for venison, which tends to be a bit lean and probably needs gentler handling, was still quite tasty (and it was our own fault for not asking for it a bit rarer; the menu had specifically stated it came "medium well"). Chips were hot and crispy and of properly-sized chunky-ness. HAJ has always been a light eater, so she didn't manage to finish her tagliatelle, but the rest of us were happy to give her a hand; the wild mushrooms were extremely tasty, and I dread to think how much cream went into the dish, but I suspect it was worth it.

We dithered a bit about ordering desserts, and in the end all got a coffee except HAJ (she'd had a hot chocolate to start the meal with, and declared it to be "very yummy") and ordered a chocolate fudge brownie and a pear-and-apple crumble to share between the five of us, the latter more for the accompanying honey ice cream than for the crumble. I confess, I rather preferred the crumble - the fruit was lightly sweetened and spiced just so with cinnamon and nutmeg (mmm), and the crumble very crisp and buttery. Honey ice cream was just right for it. The brownie, although pretty good, fell under what I call the "cheesecake rule" - something I very rarely order in a restaurant, because the odds are that I can make it better at home (all I need is a smaaaaall aubergine!) and will thus be disappointed. My brownie recipe is from Cook's Illustrated, and is a rather superior brownie to what was on offer, which was more sugary than chocolately. But the coffee was good, and I dare say that I had more than my fair share of the crumble, and so was content.

The whole meal, which consisted of 5 substantial main courses, a bottle of wine, 2 desserts and coffee, came to just over £20 a head - not bad at all, though not something I'd do every month.

The Toads Mouth Too

We started moving in (properly) on Thursday.

This went on for some time.

Yesterday being Sunday, we (that is, JP and I) decided that the unpacking could wait long enough for us to go out and have some brunch. Normally we would've been more adventurous, explored further afield etc., but there was the rain to consider. Having started by visiting Browns Of Brockley a few weeks ago (a further visit, with documentation, will be forthcoming in the future), it seemed like a good idea to continue near the station and work our way outwards. Plus, we were hungry, and if it got any later we wouldn't have been able to justify ordering brunch.

So, the Toads Mouth Too it was. We hadn't really looked at online reviews (technically, we don't really have internet yet, though there are ways around that...) and so were very pleasantly surprised by the warren of little rooms below-stairs, immediately grabbing a table across from an attractive charcoal sketch of a nude figure.

The breakfast menu was promising - JP went for the "full toad", which consisted of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans (which he subbed for hash browns), and being very hungry, both Cumberland sausage and chorizo. I didn't trust my ability to consume that much in one sitting (rightly so, as it turned out - portions are very generous), and so ordered eggs and bacon with brown toast, and a fresh fruit salad. Both of us asked for black Americano coffees.

The coffee was very decent, and arrived very swiftly, as did the fruit salad. . The salad seemed to be a mix of melon, banana, pineapple, clemetine, grapes and strawberries - I was a little puzzled by the inclusion of strawberries, given that it's November, but the fruit was good, and evidently quite fresh (if well-travelled internationally).

The hot food was up before I'd made much a dent in the fruit, not that this was a problem. My eggs were fluffy, and there must've been at least three of them there from the quantity, and there were three nice meaty slices of lean bacon. The toast was evidently from a large round granary loaf (yay for artisinal bread!) and cut in true doorstop-fashion. Buttered liberally, it made for a lovely bacon sandwich. I'm not sure quite how I managed to eat all of that, but I did. Part of the fruit salad had to be donated to JP, who had cleaned his even more generously-laden plate before I did, appearing to enjoy it all immensely. We were finishing our coffee (and writing a shopping list out) just as the lunch rush seemed to begin, around 11.30.

So, the Toads Mouth Too seems like a keeper, for breakfast at least - perhaps a little pricey (we paid £25 for the two of us, including a tip, since the staff were so friendly and quick with everything), but worth the money for good, fresh and indulgent food. Plus, we probably saved money in the long run, since we didn't have another meal until 8pm that night. At some point, we'll have to try out their dinner offerings, which by popular repute, are both tasty and good value.

First post, dedicated to all my imaginary friends out there

Hello, all my as-yet-non-existent readers! This blog will be a place where my partner and I chart our explorations of Brockley, South London, things we have cooked and eaten, and the joys and perils of being grad students in an unfamiliar part of town.