More bad news for Deptford cafes

Deptford is going to be even shorter of decent cafes this summer, with the announcement that the Bear Cafe is closing on Friday 25th July, apparently due to 'unresolved financial, building and staffing issues'. But they are hoping to reopen in September, so it's not as final as the sad loss of Deptford Properly was. In fact I'm sure there have been short-term closures of the Bear Cafe in the past, so hopefully it will be back later in the year. In the meantime, if you get chance to go down there on Friday, they will be selling off all their unsold chocolate bars, packs of Fairtrade tea and coffee and so on.

I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Bear Cafe over the years - at first I loved it because it was about the only place in Deptford doing decent coffee and tasty homemade salads and soups. It's got lots of seating space in the back for loafing around, not to mention the sheltered little garden that can be very pleasant in the sunshine. The presence of the gallery gives it that edge over just a regular cafe, and the exhibitions cover a broad spectrum of style and subject matter

But then there were the wilderness years - and not too long ago either! It seemed every time I visited, half the menu of sandwiches were unavailable, or they only had sliced bread. No humus, no ciabatta, no brie, etc. The Geezer and I used to joke that it would be quicker to ask what WAS available before ordering. Not to mention the fact that sometimes the big room at the back turned into a badly-run creche - children running round screaming while their parents sat chatting and ignoring the chaos.

I think that the arrival of the Deptford Project provided something of a kick up the backside. The past few months have seen earlier opening hours, consistent availability of menu items, and service that was much less haphazard.

I seriously hope that it will reopen later in the year - not just because of their divine sweet potato salad and the spicy split pea soup that I'm still trying to recreate at home, but for the sake of genuine competition and variety for the High St.

So while we're on the subject, don't forget some of our other great local (independent) cafes which I will try and review soon. One of the High St's hidden gems is the Albany cafe - plenty of room both inside and in the garden at the back, and a short but varied menu that changes every day. Usually one meat and one vegetarian dish, plus some fantastic home-made soups and some great cakes too. The good news is that the Albany cafe is planning to open Sunday afternoons from September onwards.

Also on the radar is the Laban Centre's cafe and bar which serves a range of wholesome meals, sandwiches and salads, not to mention a delicious range of soft drinks and teas. According to the website, it is open Thursday evenings for drinks and games, with special promotions on certain beers.

Let's hope that we don't lose any more of our local independents - the best way to keep them going is get down there and use them! I'd like to see more of them opening evenings or Sundays but I realise it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation because no-one really plans to eat out in Deptford in the evening since the options are so limited.

Creekside charrette

If you missed the Creekside Charrette last month, you might be interested in this article in Building magazine which was published last week.

The story is more about the charrette process itself rather than the outcome of the process, but makes quite an interesting read. Except that predictably, the journalist, Stephen Kennett, refers to Deptford as 'down-at-heel'.

I don't really know whether this process will have any influence on the style and quality of developments along Creekside - it will be interesting to see if anything filters through. The 'results' of the charrette are here, but be warned, this is a document of almost 30MB with lots of interesting pictures, some diagrams and thought-provoking maps, but very little by way of explanation.

And can I just add my own twopenneth?



No. Not on your Nellie. Absolutely not. Thanks for the offer, but really I'd rather you didn't.

Hello there!

Delighted to have discovered another Deptford blogger, currently putting me to shame with her regular posts. Pop over to Caroline's Miscellany for some entertaining musings on Deptford and its surrounds, as well as some interesting historical notes about our much-loved locale.

Twelve minutes?!

It's quite a splendid wheel to look at and I was interested in planning a ride...until I read that each ride lasts 12 minutes. And costs £7.

I think I will stick to looking at it from the ground, and enjoying the free views from the top of Point Hill!

Made in Deptford - a moan

Our lovely home-grown festival 'Made in Deptford' has traditionally suffered from an appalling lack of publicity. Last year wasn't too bad, since they tied it to the Tour de France coming through the borough, hence the dates were set well ahead of the usual schedule. This year, unfortunately, it seems to have surpassed itself. Today I found out that it is being held on 5/6 July (less than two weeks' time), but only by total chance!

Where are the posters in the shops, local cafes and on lamp posts? How the hell do they expect to attract people to events without advertising? I realise that the organisers are probably scraping around trying to find funding, but how much effort does it take to print a few hundred posters and flyers and take them down the high street?

I've already committed myself to something else on Saturday, so looks like I'm only going to get chance to get to the festival on the Sunday.

Incidentally, don't go to the website looking for a programme, as there is very little information there. However I did see a solitary poster yesterday lunchtime in the Deptford Project cafe, perhaps this is your best stop for information!

The Deptford Project

The Dame's first 'official' visit to the Deptford Project, Deptford's new 'jaw-achingly trendy new cafe-bar' (that's what Brockley Central said about it, not sure what it means but nice to know our neighbours are now a teeny bit jealous of us!) was a bit of a disappointment, so I held off reviewing it until I'd been back for a second visit. After all, every new place has teething problems, and it seemed only fair to give it a second chance. It lived up to, and beyond the challenge, I'm happy to say!

On reflection, my first visit for breakfast last Saturday morning was a tough ask, especially since the cafe had only been open a few days. Deptford is not blessed with as many greasy spoons as you might expect, but a couple of them reach a pretty high level by greasy spoon standards(and some of them are correspondingly poor, it's true to say). So to go to a trendy cafe for a fried egg sandwich was always going to be interesting.

The most notable difference was that my egg sandwich came with salad! I'm not talking about a plateful, it was more like salad garnish, but not really necessary accompaniment to such a dish. More problematic was the fact that my request for salt and pepper threw the staff into a bit of a tizz! In all seriousness, you can't have a fried egg sandwich without a touch of salt and some black pepper - table condiments please!

The sandwich was tasty (even without condiments) and the coffee was better than at my regular greasy spoon, but could have done with being a bit stronger. That being said, it was extremely pleasant to sit out on the decking in the sun, and enjoy my breakfast al fresco.



My second visit, for lunch today, was a much better experience, and the food exactly as I had hoped it would be. The baguette sandwiches looked nothing out of the ordinary, but the vegetarian quiche and fish pie that were on offer as lunchtime specials, and the three salads available were clearly homemade and proved very tasty.



I had the quiche (spinach and feta cheese with a pleasingly crunchy pastry base) along with two salads, one was nicoise-esque with green beans, tuna and boiled egg, the other was a lovely Moroccan-style salad with carrot, sweet potato and spices, and some leaves with a balsamic/soy sauce/olive oil dressing that finished it off wonderfully.



Along with a bottle of cranberry-flavoured soft drink, it came to £6.45 which seemed very reasonable for the quality of food.



The carriage is very brightly decorated, with one long table down the middle and the kitchen at the other end. I visited after the lunchtime rush, when it was quite quiet - it was pleasant to sit inside and read the magazines (Wallpaper and so on, imagine - in Deptford!) but I suspect it could be quite noisy if it was full. Or perhaps people speak louder when there is no-one right next to them - I was at the far end but still had to endure the full details of someone else's conversation.

Not much room for push-chairs or for children to run about (I mention that as a plus point - both the Albany and the Bear Cafe suffer too much from creche syndrome, attracting parents who think it acceptable to let your kids run riot when others are trying to enjoy a quiet lunch). Plenty of room for them to sit at the table or sleep in their buggies ;-)

All in all a fabulous addition to the area - my new lunchtime haunt, I'll be hoping to work from home a bit more often now!

Cafe news: good and bad

Well, the good news is that The Deptford Project will be opening next Monday. You can find out more about this colourful carriage cafe by visiting the website where you can see a cute video about how the train carriage was brought to the site, and learn that they will be opening SEVEN days a week, from 7.30am on a weekday (YAY for decent coffee on the way to the train station!). They will be open on Sundays too, which is great news for the high street - presumably because the new market will also be there on a Sunday.

They are promising home-made food using locally-sourced ingredients, and bespoke furniture. I'm looking forward to seeing the interior - I love the new exterior, it's colourful and witty without being pretentious, and apparently the interior is done by the same folks.

Unfortunately, I also have bad news to report. Our wonderful cafe down the other end of the street, Deptford Properly, has closed! I don't know the full details as yet - there have been rumours they had some flooding problems - but I will be off down there tomorrow to see if I can find out. It certainly can't be lack of trade, it was always busy when I went in there.

If it's gone for good, this will be a dreadful loss for Deptford. Their food, teas and cakes were of exceptionally high standard, and it was a wonderful place to relax and meet people.

Help! My butchers ate my cafe!

When we are both in Deptford on a Saturday morning, the first debate of the day is usually about where to eat our breakfast - yours or mine? We both have our favourite cafe - mine is the old retainer, Selecta Cafe (wins on its black pudding and poached eggs) while the Geezer's is the new pretender Kellie G's (doesn't even serve black pudding - shame!).

But this weekend he was in for a bit of a shock. After the first shock of me agreeing to eat breakfast in Kellie G's, we then tried to find it! Seems the brand new cafe with its gleaming tiles and shiny seats had been swallowed up without a trace by its neighbour!


For non-locals, the left hand side of this shop was formerly Kellie G's (opened no more than 6 months ago after a total refit).

Deptford High St is now back down to two greasy spoons - a disappointing scenario for a busy shopping street in Sarf East London. We don't count the one near the station cos it serves 'turkey rashers' rather than bacon, and lamb sausages. I don't know what, if anything, they offer in place of black pudding.

But never mind, what the street lacks in cafes, it makes up for in butchers and wet fish shops, of which more later.

Meanwhile, our new cafe is taking shape slowly but surely. There is now a high, sturdy-looking fence around the carriage (not the one shown here on the right, I'm talking about the one I'm taking the picture through!). It has new graffiti as shown.

And on the other side, a serving hatch, door, and large decking area which hopefully we'll be able to use when the sun decides to shine!

Deptford farmers' market report

I eschewed my regular Sunday morning drive up the Big Hill to Blackheath station carpark this morning, in favour of a short cycle ride along the back streets to check out the fledgling farmers' market in Deptford Park. I didn't really need to buy anything, I'd got most of what I needed in Deptford yesterday because I had no idea what sort of, or how many stalls to expect.

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised, I found the market to be small but (almost) perfectly formed! There were about 10 stalls in total, but they offered a good range of produce, and some were frighteningly local! I'm used to seeing farmers from quite far afield at the Blackheath market, but here there was a local producer from Eltham! Steve Page of Caregrow explained how he grows a large range of different types of chillis in two greenhouses in his back garden in Eltham, and he uses them to produce a fabulous range of relishes, dips/sauces and also jams, marmalades and mustards. Not sure how to use them? There are also some great recipes on the website, including one for Peppered Pineapple Icecream!

I had been expecting some element of repetition at the market, thinking that it might just be the same producers as the Blackheath market, but only one (the excellent goats cheese stall) was there.
Artisan Foods (a long-time stall holder at Borough Market) had a small selection of goods - cakes and quiches - so happily I was able to score one of their fabulous orange and almond cakes!

As for the rest of the stalls, they were as follows (not in any particular order);

- a reasonable range of fruit, veg and plants on one stall (six cox apples for £1, a bag of salad potatoes for £1, and a bunch of purple sprouting and a bunch of rhubarb for 60p each). I liked the fact that most of the items were marked per bag or per item, which I thought might appeal to local visitors on low incomes - so that they would know how much it was going to cost before paying. He also had a good selection of eggs, both hen and duck eggs.

Core Juice had a nice range of apple and pear juices - three or four different types of apple juice, a pear juice which I chose, and an apple and ginger juice. Only the fact that I was on my bike and had only brought one pannier prevented me from buying one of each!


Meat choice was restricted to two stalls, one selling wild rabbit and venison, and the other selling pork products. The rabbit was jointed and sold in vacuum packs, I bought half a rabbit to put in a casserole later in the week.

The other stall was the Giggly Pig Company, which is based in Romford and has outdoor rare breed British Saddleback pigs, which are made into a huge range of different sausage types. I chose 'hop' sausages (which have hop flowers in them) as I thought this had a nice local ring to it, and also took home a couple of faggots to try. The range of sausage flavours was quite interesting, including 'welsh dragon' (pork and leek with chilli) and stilton and asparagus sausages.

There was a small range of bread available, but I didn't examine it closely as my bag was getting rather full by this stage.

Finally there was a stall selling pies, both meat and fruit - all of which looked delicious, but likewise I was getting a bit laden down with produce and it seemed wise to stop buying! There were treacle tarts, rhubarb crumbles, and meat pies such as chicken and ham, lamb, and so on. Next time I will make it my first stop!

Definitely recommended if you get chance to visit the next one... I just hope I manage to find out the date of the next one before it is past! There were plenty of signs all around the park at every entrance, but that's no good to anyone who doesn't pass it regularly. Just one plea to the organisers - wider publicity please!!

***Update*** I just got my copy of Lewisham Life, and according to the listings, the next market is 25 May.

Mayor's appeal

To save you the trouble, I've had a quick read of the bumph I got in the post the other day, which contains the election appeals from the candidates for the Mayor of London. They are arranged in random order, and I've followed the same order in my listing. It makes for pretty sorry reading - considering that this is the only piece of literature that is guaranteed to arrive in the houses of about 99% of voters - and hence is the most likely to be read by the electorate (although I'd say that likelihood is pretty low) - some of them seem to have put very little thought into what they have used their two pages/£10k contribution to say.

1. Richard Barnbrook, British National Party.
Richard has a letter addressed to you, his 'fellow Londoner' and a selection of quotes from people 'like you' who are going to vote for him. Funnily enough they are all white, even though a lot of his fellow Londoners are black. But don't take it personally. He is going to stop asylum seekers and illegal immigrants from engulfing London, and taking all your houses and hospital places. And he's going to give all pensioners a free 24-hour travel pass (to go with the off-peak one they currently enjoy). He's also promising houses, a better NHS, better education, jobs, lower council taxes, lower tolerance on crime and yobs, and pretty much anything else you want. Apart from immigration.
Student Samantha Winter is committed to voting BNP 'because I'm Irish and the BNP is the only party that cares about the indigenous people of these islands. Our jobs are under threat from economic migrants' she says, oblivious to the irony in her words.

2. Lindsey German, Left List.
Lindsey has made sure to get her full money's worth out of her two pages by including plenty of text; unfortunately there's not much about her intentions, as she spends a lot of her space moaning about the things that are unjust and bad about London and about Labour. She has ten steps to a better London - most of them involve opposing things, which could be quite difficult without additional political backing. Many of her aims are admirable, to provide more council housing, better transport, to enforce the London minimum wage and to oppose discrimination, but I can't help thinking it's a very big ask.

3. Boris Johnson, Conservatives.
Next to a big picture of Boris looking like someone is teaching him to read (slowly), he sets out his eight-part plan to make London better. Numbers 1 to 4 are about reducing crime, including 'cracking down on the culture of casual disorder'. This focus on fear suggests either that he is a puppet having his strings pulled by the paranoia-inducing Evening Standard (surely not?!) or that he doesn't have many policies. He's also going to protect our green spaces, while in the same breath scrapping the congestion charge. He pays lip service to housing, without actually saying much about it. According to his spiel, he 'has the ideas to do it', but obviously doesn't feel inclined to share them with the electorate.

4. Sian Berry, Green Party.
Sian's election manifesto stands out among the wasteland of empty words - whether or not you agree with her aims, at least her promises are measurable and her aims relatively modest. She wants to cut bus and off-peak tube fares by 20p, impose a 20mph speed limit on all residential roads, give free insulation to all homes that need it, and change planning rules to ensure that at least 60% of all new housing is affordable. She is backing small businesses by pledging to provide affordable premises in new commercial developments, wants solar electricity and heating on 100,000 roofs in the city by 2015, and says she will cancel the Thames Gateway plans. Insisting on the London Living Wage and opposing airport expansion are also among her aims, although her pledge to bring rail and tube franchises back under public control is probably straying into the realms of fantasy.

5. Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat.
Unfortunately someone told Brian that purple goes well with yellow and that he should use the two colours liberally (ahem) in his manifesto. I suspect few people will be able to read this without hurting their eyes, but no matter, as Brian's spiel is largely predictable. As an ex-copper his first priority, natch, is crime. He's going to cut it. He's also going to improve transport, although it seems all he is going to do is provide more buses, and more countdown information boards. Apart from making it safer and free from crime, of course.
As something of an afterthought he's going to provide more affordable homes and oppose Heathrow expansion. I'm sure he'll make them free from crime too. My lifelong political leanings, such as they are, are often more lib dem than anything else, but I have a nagging feeling that Brian is in the wrong party.

6. Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party.
"Fed up with not being listened to?" asks Gerard, perhaps a little too bitterly. Vote for him and he makes the radical promise that he will punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Having to use this as one of his election promises smacks of desperation. But wait, there's more! He's also going to say No to the Lisbon Treaty/European Constitution. Thank God for that, it's about time one of the London mayoral candidates brought that up! Oh, and he's padded out his other crime/transport pledges with a ban on 'cash for cronies and quangos'. Despite all the bullshit, he still seems to have given slightly more thought to his manifesto that Boris.

7. Alan Craig, The Christian Choice.
Alan has wheeled out his thoroughly wholesome looking family for a photo opp, although I did have to check the caption to find out whether it was his wife in the picture, or his eldest daughter. He spouts a lot of stuff about promoting marriage and stable family as the answer to every social evil, while opposing plans by a 'controversial Islamic sect' to build a 'mega-mosque' in West Ham. His opposition seems to be more on religious grounds than planning concerns. He also intends to 'end the (alleged) corruption at City Hall'. The brackets are his. Er, that's about it.
I'm slightly mystified as to why someone would want to waste their money putting themselves forward as a candidate for The Christian Choice. Surely it would be a simple matter to work out exactly what sort of chance you would have of being elected, just by digging up statistics on the number of people who attend church in the capital, or the number of couples living in 'sin'?

8. Matt O'Connor, The English Democrats.
Matt loves being English, he seems quite nostalgic for the 'green and pleasant land'. Being a Londoner, he is obviously older than he looks if he can remember that far back. There's a lot to read on this page, but I can save you some time here. Matt says we must stop giving money to Scottish people, and introduce a bank holiday on St George's Day. It's as simple as that. Bless.

9. Ken Livingstone, Labour.
Either the devil incarnate, or the saviour of London's buses, depending on how you feel about him. Or somewhere in between - contrary to what the Evening Standard thinks, there are a lot of people out there who don't necessarily like Ken, but are willing to recognise some of the good things he has done for London. In Ken's election picture he is smiling broadly, and looks like the friendly old bloke down at the allotments who gives you tips for improving your carrot crop. Take a good look, it's probably the only place you will ever see this picture.
Ken is pledging to continue improvements to the public transport network, extend discounts for students and young people, and make the Freedom Pass valid 24 hours a day (bet you never thought you'd see a BNP/Labour manifesto crossover!!!). Elsewhere it's refreshing to see someone addressing the needs of young people by promising to provide new opportunities for them in education as well as out of school hours, rather than just regarding them as part of the crime statistics and threatening to take away their free bus passes if they misbehave. Naturally Ken plans to pursue his intentions to increase the congestion charge for high polluting vehicles while reducing the tax on the least polluting.

There is another candidate; Winston McKenzie, who is standing as an independent. He didn't contribute to the booklet, for what reasons it's unclear. So if you want to read about his policies, you can see them here, including his mayoral rap. His top priorities are the congestion charge and youth crime, he obviously intends to have policies about tubes and buses, Crossrail, the Thames Gateway and green issues, but either he hasn't thought of them yet or he's still trying to find something to rhyme with gateway.