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 (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 (39): Konditor & Cook, Curzon Cinema, Shaftesbury Avenue

So, I've been away for a few days in Donegal, doing advanced research into blending Guinness and Heineken, and thus hardly felt like eating at all today. The loooong journey home didn't help much either, nor did the continual dry retching. But then again, there's no other in-flight entertainment on Ryanair, so maybe I was doing my thing for everyone else's benefit.
But back on the quest for novelty in food - this time, down to the cinema at the bottom of Soho, the furthest south I've been yet. Feeling rather sick afterwards - a very rich sandwich of pesto and mozzarella and aubergine, which was good, but possibly rather ambitious after the weekend. That, combined with a huge piece of chocolate cake with vanilla icing that felt like it was almost an inch thick, has left me struggling with the world. Only another ten and a half hours before Monday is over, however...

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.