#IR5: Unforeseen Circumstances
Welcome to the fifth edition of In Review
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Jay Rayner | The Observer
Levante, London (Zone 3)
It must be very annoying to have a planned review go awry, which is the grace one can extend to the very strange opening of this week’s review from Jay Rayner.
I am standing in front of a corrugated shutter in Lewisham, southeast London, thinking about what might have been. Behind this shutter is a one-time caff, a venerable greasy spoon if you will, that once traded in the holy trinity of egg, chips and beans, alongside steaming mugs of tea the colour of a Caramac bar. Recently it was taken over by the Italian Antonio Delicatessen next door. It’s still a caff, only now one with a strong Italian accent, utilising the ingredients stocked by the mothership.
We mourn the passing of greasy spoons and with good reason. They are vital third spaces; community hubs that feed more than just our bellies. But they are too easily defined by menu. There are one-time greasy spoons serving cheap Greek Cypriot, Chinese and Thai food. This one could still be true to its origins, even with a ragù-splattered menu. It’s about intent, not recipes. Anyway, all this ethnographic guff is irrelevant, because for reasons described as “unforeseen”, it’s closed. It’s a flinty, brooding word, that. Good things are rarely described as unforeseen and certainly not ones that lead to the three-week closure of a business. My thoughts are with everybody involved with Antonio Caffe & Restaurant in Lewisham. I will return another time. And for those wondering, it doesn’t have a website let alone a fancy online booking widget. There was no reason to call, so its closure was unforeseen to me, too.
The elegaic, introspective tone; the discussion of the hybridity of the London caff; only to undermine it all by describing one’s own promising thinking as “ethnographic guff” and revealing that the thing elegised is a temporary closure for three weeks. A temporary closure which, while “unforeseen,” was readily and quickly explained by a visit to Antonio Delicatessen’s Instagram page, the closest thing a great deal of London restaurants have to a website or “fancy online booking widget”:
Mourning a verifiable holiday is, all told, a bit much.
After the paywall:
How Jamie Oliver tripped up one critic with his herbs
A round-up of reviews from around the papers
A special look into this year’s Michelin chaos
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