Year of Eating Differently (107): Double J's, Charlotte Street

They've got a 'License to Fill', apparently. There was an absolute din from the workmen over the street demolishing a building, and it's freezing cold, so I feel something akin to shell-shock at the moment. Have a toasted ciabatta with mozzarella and sundried tomatoes to make up for it. And some crisps. Hardly unique, eh?

What may mark this out as something special is how many staff there are. There were four customers in the shop including me, and about six people in bright orange t-shirts with 'D-J' printed on them - since I can only assume that Double J is already an abbreviation, it seems a bit much to contract it further.
Normally, the ciabatta will be mozzarella and sundried tomatoes and something else. Not so today, and as a result it's certainly lacking something. Lacking excitement, joy, surprise, or at least some basil leaves. So in future, please remember that a sandwich is best if it has 3 fillings. Not less, not more. So perhaps that lack of anything special is something special about Double J's.

Year of Eating Differently (105): The Breakfast Club, D'Arblay Street

We were meant to be eating at Pierre Victoire today, but because it seems that every Friday my lunchtime companions are rushing to get back for an important meeting, and because one of them had got tanked up at a Valentine's Night extravaganza on Regent Street and stank of alcohol, nobody was brave enough to take a whole hour out. Plus P-V would be packed full of lunchtime punters who probably eat lunch in the same place from day to day and therefore don't have that monkey on their back of desperation to notch up another meal every day.
Because of last night's booze (not me, I was at home reading a book and watching Ashes to Ashes with one eye, unimpressed for the second week and hoping it was going to improve) we also ruled out the pub on Broadwick Street, couldn't get into a brand new hot dog restaurant because it was having an opening party that was invitation only (surely I should have told them who I was and blagged my way in), and thus ended up at the Breakfast Club round the corner.
Unfortunately, service here is damnably slow because it's always packed. One of our number is dying of a hangover, the kind that makes you want to start crying and crawl under the table, the other two are gabbling away about sexual mores and whether you should put out on the third date or not (should you put out on a first date? should you ever not put out on a first date?), and possibly these two things offend the woman behind the counter.
I order a goats cheese, rocket and mushroom wrap, a packet of garlic flavoured crisps and a couple of date and cranberry cookies. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THAT.
Pay close attention, because if you ever end up at the Breakfast Club, listening to the (possibly) ironic soundtrack from Footloose, don't ever order any of those three things. It was like an infernal triptych of awful food - the garlic crisps were revolting, the cheese was like a deposit of something and as for the cookies, the forlorn hope I had that they could cheer me up after the other two was cruelly dashed to the floor when they turned out to taste like sweetened MDF. Not too good.

Year of Eating Differently (96): Flavour, Brewer Street

Apparently it's "food that loves you"; that is constituted by a plastic encased salad, an eton mess (first time I've seen that in Soho, and no, that's not call for a dirty joke about Compton's or any other bar) and a packet of crisps.
Rather OTT on non-sustainables - no matter how smug Pret may be about telling you that you don't have to take their napkins, it's a bit better than Flavour giving me copious plastic cutlery, bags, plastic packaging and napkins. But hey, they have their heart in the right place, right? Or at least three doors down from a strip joint. Today they had a giant man outside with a jug of coffee, offering free caffeine to the masses - doubt that will last long. But he was very tall, if that makes any difference to one's meal choice.

Salad is pretty good - actually tastes of something and the pasta isn't limp like you sometimes get. The eton mess is ok... but then what's difficult? You bung some cream and some berries together with some smashed up meringue. Disappointingly, watery fluid in the bottom of the pot - but possibly this is one of those things that's better if it's not prepared far in advance...

Year of Eating Differently (95): Benjy's, New Oxford Street

Benjy's used to be a chain of cheap sandwich joints that spectacularly self-destructed in 2007. Prior to then, they used to serve pretty awful sandwiches and other items of food, that were sometimes handed out to the homeless if they weren't sold by the end of the day. A cruel man might suggest that it would have been unsurprising if they'd been told by the homeless to keep the sandwiches - if that was all they could afford, they needed them more than the average tramp did.
So I was a little surprised to light upon a Benjy's still trading on New Oxford Street. Nothing was branded as Benjy's food - I had a quite foul plastic wrapped mozzarella roll from 'The Food Company', a name that betrays the same imaginativeness that was applied to their recipes - and the Eccles cake and packet of crisps were also standard fare. One does wonder if the location had just been taken over by somebody else, too lazy to dispense with the Benjy's logo.
If you feel some nostalgia for a very cheap sandwich shop from the turn of the century, pop along. Otherwise, I can't see much reason for it.

Year of Eating Differently (83): Caffe V, Rathbone Place

Free soup with every filled sandwich. I thought there was a catch, but there wasn't. I needed a sandwich, and I got soup as well. Happy days.
Sandwich - well, it was focaccia with mozzarella and sundried tomatoes, plus some rocket. So pretty much the same as the Tricolore from Make Mine, but not dripping with so much oil that you could feel the early onset of a heart attack.
Soup was courgette and vegetable. If I didn't know better, I'd say that a courgette was a vegetable, but ours is not to reason why, ours is to do and dine. It's very good soup. The last soup I had was probably some of that godawful Covent Garden stuff (half soup, half salt, all man!) whereas this tastes like, well, soup. Could have done with a bit of salt though.
Also got a muffin - toffee apple yoghurt - that will contribute to the muffin directory, and a packet of crisps, for only 5.35. Jolly good.

Year of Eating Differently (22): Taste, Rathbone Place

Going here does raise questions about the whole enterprise. If you choose to have soup that turns out to be from a Covent Garden Soup Company carton, and it's warmed up in a microwave, and the sole addition that the staff make is to put some pepper onto it, are you doing anything different to going to Tesco's and buying a carton of soup yourself? But on the other hand, how many cafes are growing their own potatoes/baking their own bread/churning their own butter? If I were that concerned with getting back to the source of the food, then I probably wouldn't be eating out so much. Or I'd be eating out of the kitchen window of a farmhouse somewhere. But I digress.
Taste is ok. It's a shop by itself rather than a chain (what difference does that make anyway?) but the food on offer isn't much different to elsewhere. Seems a more limited range than Shellys or Make Mine, but I haven't dipped too deeply into it. And although the added pepper to the soup improves it, it can't get over the flaw of Covent Garden Soup - it's far too goddamn salty, and a bit of pepper can't overcome that. It's enough pepper to make your tongue tingle a bit though, which is a novel experience. Crisps - well, so what. They work. I did resolve to stop eating crisps recently. Then I went to Charing Cross station, and the experience was so horrible I could only get over it by eating a packet of Frazzles. How weak willed am I?
Akrasia aside, the chocolate coated ginger biscuits are good. Very good indeed.

Year of Eating Differently (18): Planet Organic, Torrington Place

Off to get my dissertation bound today, so stopped off on the way back from the University of London Union and went into this organic/healthfood store. Picked up a plastic wrapped felafel wrap (certainly a leitmotif of this project, but the first one to be so suffused in quality polluting packaging), some crisps (or at least I thought they were crisps, but more careful perusal of the packet suggests they've been baked and are made from rice, so they're probably utterly disgusting) and finally a bar of Green & Blacks chocolate (recently acquired by the chocolate behemoth that is Cadburys, so there goes their 'alternative' credentials). Now I'm thinking how foul the rest of this meal is probably going to be, I'm kicking myself for not getting the giant bar of ginger flavoured Green & Blacks when I had the chance...

Year of Eating Differently (8): Cafe Pompidou, Dean Street

Sadly, Cafe Pompidou doesn't resemble a half-finished art gallery in Paris. Oh well. Taking a break from expensive eateries this week, due to the current account being almost bare of funds. So instead it's a baked potato with mushrooms, a packet of crisps, and an apple.

Potato: nice presentation. Lots of herbs chucked onto it, which is a first. Sage? Thyme? Not basil. That makes me sad. I like basil. Sadly, the mushrooms are rather rubbery, but what can you do? The whole thing took about 4 minutes to arrive, so it's hardly as if they're not microwaving the whole thing, and for £2.25, what's the problem? (Assuming it hasn't been assembled in the Third World by somebody on a daily rate of 14p, that is - will globalisation affect my lunch?)
So that hit the spot. The crisps are revolting. I do wonder why I keep eating crisps when they're so utterly disgusting. Packet of salt & vinegar yesterday and they were horrible too. So from today I resolve: no more crisps. Well, maybe those lime Kettle Chips, but only in extreme circumstances. Oh, and Monster Munch (but they're really not as good as they used to be, are they?)
Apple: dunno, really. It's an apple. Starting in on it now. Will edit this post if it turns out to have a maggot in it.

Year of Eating Differently (6): Marks & Spencer, Tottenham Court Road

Walking out the office today, bumped into a friend from lastminute.com who now works as a sysadmin for a publisher in Soho. So instead of going for a salad, went up Tottenham Court Road in search of smoke machines. (He's guitarist in a Hawkwind tribute band, naturally.) After discussing the pole-dancing studio he's being invited to the opening of, and my chaotic personal life, ducked over the road from Maplins (who sell a fog machine for 39.99GBP, by the way) and bought a sandwich, crisps, fruit and yoghurt from M&S for 4.20.
I'm allowed to stuff my face this Friday, because I rode to work (11 miles by bike) and will be riding home again, and I'm off to shorinji kempo tonight.

Anyhow:
sandwich is a stock in trade - every time I get kind of drunk, modus operandi is to pick the last one of these out from M&S in Charing Cross station before getting the final train home of the night. Straight from the chiller cabinet there's not much flavour to it, but if you let it get up to room temperature, you can at least taste the avocado and the sauce.
Bananas a bit underripe. The crisps were pretty foul - not enough salt, and just dry and not particulary crispy. Kept the yoghurt in the fridge for after getting back from the dojo...