Year of Eating Differently (122): Soho Snax, Brewer Street

Godawful.
Some kind of tricolore focaccia, served up by a guy who was almost too shy to speak, wrapped up in paper like a piece of battered cod, and then I made the mistake of adding a geriatric blueberry muffin to my order. If I've said the Pret Christmas muffin was a ball of hot disappointment dressed up as mucus, wrapped in a doughy exterior, then I'm sorry; this was far far worse. Not in a long time have I had to throw something away because I couldn't face taking another bite of it.

Year of Eating Differently (97): Servito, Broadwick Street

Despite the poor chap here being assailed by the sound of an alarm going off every five minutes, he seems quite happy, trapped behind his counter with a coffee machine behind him and bowls of sundried tomatoes and olives to the fore.
Shop itself is tiny, and on the table has two bits of advertising: a programme for the Curzon and a flyer for Torture Garden's Valentine Special, which I can't remember the link to.
Anyway, flagellating Goths aside, the place is pretty good - prompt service (well, it is off the main drag of Wardour/Dean Street) so I'm the only customer in there and he's very cheerful - perhaps because he's changed the display on the till so that it reads 'YOU ARE BEING SERVED BY AN ITALIAN GUY' when he rings up the bill.
Sandwich is focaccia with sundried tomatoes, rocket and mozzarella. This is very good, and comparatively cheap compared to some meals recently, but a word to the wise: sundried tomatoes and tomato foccacia might be over-egging the pudding very slightly. Crumpled by defeat, off to sleep under my desk while the database gnashes its teeth over some minor infraction of referential integrity. Or does it? Or do I? [enquiry into midweek ennui, doubts over own existence and exactly what it is databases do at night whilst you slumber omitted for the sake of brevity]

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 (72): Cafe Bruno, Wardour Street

Interesting ambience here. It's diagonally opposite Vita Ingredient, which looks like a macrobiotic whorehouse, all healthy juices and smoothies and stuff on a plate which is probably incredibly worthy but doesn't taste of anything at all. Cafe Bruno, on the other hand, enjoys the kind of decor that you'd have in the 1970s (wood veneer panelling), most of the customers look like vagrants and if they don't, they look even more suspicious - what man goes around with two Nokia phones? Particularly the same model - is he saving one for spares?

Anyway, I'd just depositted 37 quid in spare change at Natwest, and, feeling flush with cash, threw down 2.50 on a focaccia with mozzarella and plenty of pesto. Couldn't wait to get out of the place because I was worried one of the tramps was going to either eat me or demand money for meths, but in fact everyone in there was quite quiet and minding their own business. The focaccia was fine too - although not very much there, possibly after gorging myself at Christmas it was time to reduce the dietary intake a little...

Year of Eating Differently (34): Nino's Paninos, Frith Street

One qualm as I explained this choice to my co-workers; panini is the plural, panino is the singular. So the name of this cafe is wrong, but perhaps that's balanced out by all the people who will sell you "a panini" or "paninis", usage that never fails to make my teeth grate after some cruel person first educated me about this point.
Anyway, it's a tiny place, about the same size as those holes in the wall that serve up pizza on Leicester Square. Recessed from the street, there's space for a table or two and a counter, but sadly the food isn't much better. I had a focaccia with cheese and roasted vegetables inside it, but the cheese was the consistency of (a) raw ricotta and (b) warmed up nasal mucus at the same time; couldn't taste the vegetables or the pine kernels nestled inside. So I doubt I'll return there soon.

Year of Eating Differently (14): Shelly's, Dean Street

So, next door to Make Mine and kind of its personable alter ego. Again, you can specify what you want and somebody constructs it for you, but somehow they have recognisable personalities and actually recognise you if you go back a few times. Ah, the halcyon days when they knew to make me two marmite bagels every morning... And Ian Hislop (he of Private Eye) has a 'usual' when he goes there.

Shelly's tricolore gets toasted in a panini press, and possibly that, combined with somebody not slapping on the oil like their life depended on it, gives you a sandwich that's not half as oily. Ok, it's slightly bland compared to the Make Mine experience, but you don't have that feeling of oh my god I'm going to die soon from this sandwich that Make Mine can inspire. Plus the pesto, the sundried tomatoes, the cheese, the avocado are all perceptible flavours within the hole, rather than the sledgehammer effect of their rivals.
On the downside, service can be a little slow, but you can expect a queue anywhere at lunchtime in Soho. 4.00 for the sandwich.

Year of Eating Differently (9): Make Mine, Dean Street

Nicely packaged, but inside lurks a heart of darkness...

I spent six months eating nothing but Make Mine sandwiches, which probably is part of the motivation for this endeavour. Make Mine have one person taking orders at the till, then a production line of sandwich builders that chuck out your finished order a few minutes later. Works fine when there's nobody else in the shop, but at 1pm on a weekday the place is maxed out and the queue spills out onto the road, so it's not necessarily the best place to grab a quick bite. Contrast that with Shelly's (to be visited later) where the same person takes your order, builds it and then gives it to you. Although they're also really slow when you're in a hurry.
Anyhow, the purple and white colour scheme is intended to make the place look fresh and fun. At first glance, the sandwich shop counterpart to the white and orange of Imli. When you get the sandwich, you realise that fun was accidentally identified with cholesterol and nothing else. The damn thing is dripping oil. It's the closest thing to a dirty burger without there being a burger in it; the sundried tomatoes could just as well be oildrowned tomatoes, the sprig of salad hardly counteracts this, the avocado and mozzarella - well, they're just fat anyway and the foccacia itself has been liberally hosed with pesto that seems to be mostly oil too. Sure, it tastes good for the first bite or two, but by the end you're feeling nauseated by the whole experience and it becomes a triumph of the will to finish the thing off. (Not sure as I should be comparing eating a sandwich to Leni Reifenstahl, but them's the breaks.) Oh, and the foccacia was a bit burnt on one edge.
Tricolore focaccia, £4.00. Shame and guilt, well, I get those for free