Billy & Me Quest for Eats

26-27 Lisle Street, London, WC2H 7BA
Telephone: 0871 0752925

I’ve been reading Orbital by Ian Sinclair recently and so have decided to do this blog in the style of a near-random-train-of-thought. I’ll just keep typing for a few minutes and when I stop for more than 3 seconds I’ll post it up unedited. How exciting…

Searching for food through London’s cheaper options. Behind bars. Corridors of greying brick; having stood accepted for years are now upstaged by gaudier new rivals. Amongst the last of these narrow passages. Kintaro. Dodging black-cabs. Shuffling restuaranters. Chinatown’s attic where the backward cousins live. A bucket of fishheads a week. Sushi to our western palates. And all the more agreeable for it. Crammed seats. German sharp words hitting the ribs and nudging the headrest. Bento ordered and delivered. Wasabi hot. Miso revitalising. Mackerel swimming in sweet Terkiyaki like some Lea survivor pushing to the freedom of the Thames. Freedom just means you have no choices left. Tea and beer in equal quantities. The great bridge between East and West was beneath our feet all along!!! The bottoms of our glasses just obscured it. How were we to know; nurtured on Hawksmoor, Constantine and sarnies? This new wave no/know better. Memorising phonetic codes and suggestions to validate ties and shiny shoes. Asahi! Kirn! Stella!?!?!!?!! You know only compromise. But compromise is good enough surely; if the new natives do it. If their standards are trustworhty and they surely are then there is no argument. None. It passes all tests. Imported qualities of vim and vigour for our pallid euro forms. Beers offered to suit every adventure, every fear. Quantities for my invertebrate friend. Best Value!!! Recommended.

Billy: 6
Eoin: 8
Googlemap here

So we’ve been asked to comment upon Rummers (apparently not a reference to spirit soaked drunks), a fairly unassuming pub in Cardiff by.. well I suppose I should refer to him as a friend (this chapee here:)…. But we’re not entirely sure why…

We had stopped over in Cardiff to see Joe, our former flatmate, on our way to the camping holiday in the Brecons. We hadn’t seen Joe for a while and had a genuinely lovely morning walking into Cardiff centre via a riverside walk and, after a good hour or so in the National Museum looking at stuffed seagulls, hearing the booming voice of a whale condemn us and our earth-raping kind, and lingering over the stunning sketches of DaVinci, we were kinda peckish.

There was some genuine nostalgia for Deptford days as I dragged us from place to place; refusing to enter a franchise I recognised and eschewing all things chrome… searching for Authenticity. Even the faux authentic would do. I’m not hard to please; write up your menu with chalk, put a stuffed animal over the bar and call your sliced pan ‘rustic’ and you’ve pretty much got me fooled.

Rummers delivered.

Now the food wasn’t that great. A bowl holding a chicken breast wrapped up like some Egyptian prince in bacon slices and draped generously in a tomato sauce… a thick slice from a steak and ale pie; black pie-juice oozing out to be eagerly mopped up with fries and peas… It was all perfectly fine.

But… nice relaxed staff, crazily uneven wooden furniture, names scraped like schoolyard compass graffiti into the table tops, old skool prices… It had me at hello.

Eoin: 6
Billy: 7
Googlemap: I actually can’t find the address of the place online… Errr… it’s near the castle… beside the Millets with the cool action-pants on sale.