A Brixton Food Crawl
I love a day like Saturday. Spring 101.
When winter's grasp is no longer a mauling but the tenuous clasp of an aneamic kitten hold no further threat and her captives bound outdoors chasing a teasing spring. Emancipated from boots and woolen scarves, quadruple layers and down-filled duvets. We look out the window, open it and sniff the air and run outside like too long caged animals. With the imagined strains of Creedence cranked loud on our internal soundtracks we go on the prowl London village style.
Down the hill to Brixton Village. First stop. The Provincial. Breakfast of scrambled eggs hollandaise for me and mini-Full English for the lady. Really how do you have a mini-full anything? Yup small amount of baked beans, sausage, one hash brown, slice of toast, eggs. Served at a tiny table, perched on tiny Alice in Wonderland sized chairs, squeezed in beside the table full of fresh fruit with a manual juicer. Turns out the chef is our juicer is our comic relief. After the hollandaise I propose marriage. He brays an incongruous laugh which I interpret as demurring and we pay the man and head down the passage and out on Atlantic.
No longer hungry but greedy. Less for food and more for experiences we stop at Mama Lan, my chef has a serious dumpling jones. King prawn and something, pork and something, mushroom and something. All good. The market is heaving. Every stall has a queue and everyone wants to sit outside. Tip though tables for one or two are easier to come by ( and faster) than triples and quadruples, let go of the Sex & the City quartet girls, foursomes are unwieldy and the last to be seated. But hey your friends are worth all the dumplings in the world and don't you forget it I think as we pay our bill and make our way across to Etta's Seafood Kitchen.
Etta is phenomenal. Absolutely, positively amazing. She is not about dreams and thoughts. "Talk is cheap" she says, "money buys houses" as she climbs up a ladder to do some kind of D.I.Y. Cause sometimes you really do have to do it for yourself. She tells me to stop talking and get to doing or no one will take me seriously. Move over Oprah, Etta deserves a hashtag of her own. #ettawisdom
We can't leave until I take the chef down to Fish, Wings & Tings, the other West Indian joint in the Village helmed by the wonderful Brian Danclair. His is the space we inhabit the longest. And he makes the difference. He is attentive to customers, sits and has a chat and a smile and is not bad on the eyes or as a friend of mine would say "Him don't stay no way". A prawn roti, codfish balls with lime and garlic aoli, shandy for the chef and a glass of deep regret at my Lenten avoidance of alcohol take our caloric budgets way over the limit. But the music is perfect, the sun is shining just so and we are talking and feeling like if we smile hard enough we could be on a beach in Maracas or Negril. Some place where there is no thought of four seasons. Until then we will make that spring work. Better run through the jungle.
