Bowl — breakfast until two, and everything arrives in a bowl

The menu

Everything comes in the same bowl, which started as a dishwasher decision in the first month and turned into the whole idea. Prices are on the line, not on a separate card.

Several bowls and plates of food arranged on a table.

The full one

£11.50

Everything that would be on a fried breakfast, in a bowl, with the egg on last. The bacon is cut thick by the butcher on the corner and the beans are ours, which takes four hours and annoys everybody in the kitchen.

Toast with avocado and a soft-boiled egg on a dark plate.

Egg on bread

£8.00

Two eggs, soft, on sourdough from the bakery that opens at five. The cheapest thing on the list and the one the kitchen is judged on, so it is the one we get shouted at about when it is wrong.

Avocado toast topped with a fried egg on a white plate.

The green one

£9.50

Avocado, chilli, lemon, far too much black pepper and an egg on request. Vegan without the egg and nobody has to ask for a special menu to find that out.

A bowl of orange soup with seeds scattered on top.

Soup, from eleven

£7.00

One soup a day, written on the window, on from eleven until it runs out — which on a wet Tuesday is about half past one and on a sunny Saturday is twenty past twelve.

Until two

Three things that make a breakfast room work at half past eleven on a Saturday, and all three of them are about other people's tables.

No bookings

Not for two, not for eight, not for anybody's birthday. There are nineteen tables and a queue that moves, and both of those facts depend on the other one.

Laptops before ten

Work as long as you like until ten, then the table goes back to being a table. There is no wifi password after ten either, which saves a conversation.

We seat you

Including at somebody else's table when it is full, which is most Saturdays. Nobody has ever minded twice.

Queue on the left of the door, not across the front of the flower shop — they are lovely about it and they should not have to be.

Coffee, and one thing about it

One roaster, one espresso, filter changes every fortnight. We do not have a second grinder for a decaf that four people a day order, so decaf is filter and it is a good filter.

Espresso, flat white, long black£3.20

Filter, by the cup£3.00

Tea, six kinds, in a pot£3.00

Any milk, no charge for any of them—

Bring your own cup40p off

Four of us, one shift

Two in the kitchen, two on the floor, all four here from seven. Nobody works a split shift and nobody works nights, which is the actual reason there is no dinner and the reason the same four people have been here three years.

Everybody is on the same hourly rate, including whoever is running the floor that day. Service is not added and the card machine does not ask.

Where we are

Breakfast until two, in a bowl, including the toast