Year of Eating Differently (106): Cafe Veneziana, Frith Street

Way down south beyond Old Compton Street, there's a maroon coloured cafe with a boombox parked on top of the drinks fridge, pumping out awful house music - is that to attract the clientele from G-A-Y? Surely not at midday on a Monday - there must be some time that's too early for that. Or possibly too late for the Sunday stragglers.

Anyways, got a portobello mushroom stack in ciabatta for the thoroughly reasonable price of 3.50. The combination of brie and livid orange peppers is a bit much. Now feel rather bloated, and that's before I chow down on a piece of shortbread. Adequate, then, apart from the soundtrack.

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 (87): Revolution, St Anne's Court

Quite honestly, I'm worried that I've committed an awful faux pas by going here for lunch on a Monday, rather than wearing a stripey shirt, a pair of Ben Sherman jeans and very shiny black loafers, and falling out of here on Friday night full of vodka. But never mind.
Service was attentive, the room was quite dark, the music was utterly depressing (was that Lemar I heard doing a medley of U2 covers at one point) and outside the rain was tipping it down again. But that is hardly their fault.
Ordered a panini for my lunchtime companion, and immediately felt the death of a thousand cuts - why didn't I stick to my linguistic guns and order a panino? I will never understand. For myself I thought I'd experiment with the 'low carbs' menu. This turns out to be a mushroom. With some tomatoes on top of it. And some pesto. The wisdom or otherwise of eschewing carbohydrates will be demonstrated tonight, when I have to ride 11 miles home on my bike full of nothing more energising than piss and wind. And so it goes...
[mushroom] [pesto] [tomato]

Year of Eating Differently (80): Cafe Soho, corner of Wardour Street and Old Compton Street

Nothing amazingly special here (although a bit pricey) but it was just nice. Another corner cafe, about the same size as the anonymous cafe from last week, but with cheerful, friendly staff and a 'mushroom special'. I was hoping this would be a special mushroom, but it turned out to be mushroom plus cheese, so nothing massively revolutionary there.
Good cake, coffee's not bad and there's a big window to watch people walking past. Assume this would probably be more amusing on a warm summer evening as people stagger in and out of the Village, rather than on a grey winter day when everything is dead and you're kind of cross that as well as getting a penalty fare at the station, you got a lecture from the revenue protection officer about how you need to be organised and get to the station on time. Thanks for that.

Year of Eating Differently (46): Bon Appetit, Poland Street

A very large cafe, very well lit, with lots of green and mirrors. And some ferociously friendly geezers behind the bar, asking what you want to eat. I ended up with a jacket potato with mushrooms, which despite the horrible appearance in the photo, punched well above its weight. Cafe latte was good too. Caught up with an old lastminute.com alumnus and spent most of the hour putting the world to rights and deciding that our current wage-slave existences were worthless and we should both Do Something More Important. Looks like a new year's resolution or two in the works...

Year of Eating Differently (37): Blue Cafe, Bateman Street

After a heavy weekend, a chilly day in London. Popped out to get a sandwich, had an omelette instead. Not so sure about the presentation of it - basically a cowpat of yolk studded with mushrooms - but some bread and a little salad to make up for that, and it was filling enough. Cheerful staff, quite poor paintings on the walls that you could pay 150 pounds for if you really wanted to, and sadly Norah Jones was on the stereo singing some rubbish by Meredith Brooks. Or Garth Brooks? Who knows? The woman behind the counter was the spitting image of a friend's New Zealand girlfriend, but with a more exotic accent. Somefin foreign, aintcher?

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.