With great sadness, we say goodbye to Lahloo Pantry which has closed down. It takes with it some of our loveliest memories.
Since my last post on breakfasts, a year ago this time, there have been some changes and updates in the breakfast situation. 40 Alfred Place is now mainly used for pop-ups and the fabulous Hart’s Bakery has found a new house at Bristol Temple Meads. So let’s recap:
1. Hart’s Bakery at Bristol Temple Meads: excellent pastries, cakes, buns, toasties, lunch yummies (like pasties, tarts and soup) and most importantly and palatable all day – Laura Hart’s famous Custard Tarts. Possibly the best tarts in the world and I’m willing to do a global taste tour to find out.
2. Papadeli: their soy lattes aren’t that great but their food is delicious. They are at the RWA and in Clifton.
3. Source Food Cafe: just overall excellent quality food, own-made black pudding, croissants, a good selection including pancakes with bacon, porridge with Drambuie, hard-boiled eggs with soldiers and a full English breakfast. Also, their French toast with fruit selection is lovely. Good coffee too!
4. Bordeaux Quay: this restaurant is no longer on my bad books after my daughter and I visited two months ago and we discovered that they have a whole collection of books and toys for children at the back of the restaurant. There is a box near the back wall before you get to the toilets. Their scrambled eggs and soy latte were excellent.
5. Full Court Press: the new cafe which serves exceptional coffee (and BonSoy soy milk) now also serve Hart’s Bakery custard tarts and other sweet and savoury treats by Bosh. Coffee and cake counts as breakfast, right? A delightful little cafe with friendly and helpful Matt and Dave behind the counter.
Bonus breakfast tips
Grillstock: from 8 to 10am, Grillstock serve breakfast rolls of pulled pork and egg. They come highly recommended.
Tart on Gloucester Road: I haven’t eaten here but have only heard good things from friends.
Watershed: excellent scrambled eggs. So-so tea from tea bags (as far as I know) and coffee is ok.
Boston Tea Party: Pre-baby, I used to be a regular at BTP and loved their soy lattes and poached eggs. However their stairs and distance have put an end to that for now. They also do great porridge.
Flinty Red at the Bristol Old Vic: This Michelin recommended restaurant makes excellent breakfast items but they stay out of the top five until I can visit and they have both coffee and soy milk available at the same time. Black filter coffee is nice but not good enough. Their granola is a true delicacy with hazelnuts and lovely crispy muesli.
Lahloo Pantry: – currently closed temporarily so not in the top five but — fresh cakes, a myriad selection of exotic and sturdy every day tea, locally sourced ingredients such as bacon from Ruby & White butchers on Whiteladies Road and excellent scrambled eggs served with sourdough toast. We celebrated my daughter’s second birthday there and if there is any matcha cake when you visit then it comes highly recommended by a two-year-old.
If there is to be peace in the world, Lao-Tze
If there is to be peace in the world,
there must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
there must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
there must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
there must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
there must be peace in the heart.
– Lao-Tze
I read the above on peace this morning and I didn’t know what to post alongside it. I wasn’t sure what to say about it and didn’t want to promote any practice such as meditation even though this is what I would have instinctively gone for.
I wondered over it as I went about my day and it was on the way home from the playground with my daughter that I remembered about Zakia Zaki and being killed alongside her daughter. We were crossing the road and it was empty but I imagined some motorcycle riding up on the sidewalk and doing a u-turn and careening into us. “Mother and daughter the unsuspecting victims of crazy rider” is what the papers would have said although that barely sounds like a proper headline and we may not even have made the paper. How many mothers and daughters have died, I thought. Poor Zakia Zaki.
Zakia Zaki, head of Radio Peace in Afghanistan, was shot dead in front of her child in 2007. Some stories say that she was shot while in bed with her 7-month-old son and others say it was in front of her 8-year-old child. She was working for peace and that isn’t necessarily about staying still which is what I usually associate with it.
Zakia Zaki, a prominent female Afghan journalist has been gunned down inside her home near Kabul, the second such slaying in five days. Unidentified gunmen fired seven bullets into Zakia Zaki, head of a local radio station, [in the presence of her eight-year-old] old son last night. She died instantly.
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Posted in 2013, 365, Comment
Tagged Afghanistan, Lao Tze, peace, Zakia Zaki