No.7 Cafe Rest Shepherds Bush, London

No.7 Cafe Rest, Shepherds Bush, London

A good Cafe is much more that a place to get fried food. They are places where one can sit and renumerate, get lost in conversation or float off into whimsy; they are modern Cathedrals for the thinking-man, offering solice and sanctuary in an often confusing world. Not only does 'Cafe Rest' on the Goldhalk Road have these qualities, but in some ways this is the cafe that all others serving a fry up can be measured against. It was with this in mind and after a bit of a session the night before that my good self and sister walked from Chiswick for jolly good Fry Up.


The place has just had a revamp but its lost none of it's 1950's charm, and is opposite the end of Pennard Road in Shepherds Bush where my forebears lived in the early 20th Century. All this and the Jellied Eel Shop opposite allows one to commune with a Cockney side you never really had. I could have had a 'Full Irish' which reflects the Celtic heritage of the local population. Yet Rest assured I had the the Full English.


Timmy "The Hat" "Knuckles" "Mad Man" Neville


The Breakfast.

Considering the cafe couldn't be better, the Fry up was not amazing. First problem: Chips. Don't get me wrong I like chipped and deep fried root vegetable as much as the next man but they are not part of the Full English. They have a place and it is part of the "All Day Breakfast" (This must have chips, and must be served on an oval plate). Despite being Cuckoos in the nest the chips were enjoyable and the toast and tea were great and came first as they should.

The beans were good quality, and the bacon was salty loveliness. The egg was so good I didn't save it until the end and instead broke it and let the yolk run round the plate. The more pretentious establishments can take a lesson from the mushroom presentation: they were plentiful and great with a bit of Bacon. The sausage was one of the rusk heavy, poor quality types, as you can see, but the odd thing is that it didn't seem to matter.



Chips!

There was a strange sense of positive accumulation that built throughout the meal. It was a bit like a Dickens novel: there were gripping moments, a couple of shite chapters stuck in as filler but once you got to the end it somehow didn't matter and you just got the sense that you'd consumed a great work and were in the hands of a master.

8/10

Needless to say that afterwards I was a full English.