BLANDFORD'S

Cabbie's Delight

'Two eggs, and a slice of toast darling'.

Keeping it Simple

Bench Warmer

His and Hers

Wooden Bench Booths

A Lady Comes Around

A bow for Blandford's

# 21  Key Of The Door

Taxi Haven

This north Marylebone institution has witnessed a few scoops, chronicles and celebs in it's time. Plus a few high ranking taxi cabbies. A daily commute of continuous traffic plods and meanders its way to Blandford's doorstep, covering all cultures and generating a gentle stream of constantly busy, without punters feeling poked or rushed. You could hang out in here all day, do your laundry, mend a radio and bake a cake and nobody would bat an eyelid.

Blandford's is one of those places you discover by chance and keep close to your chest. London's underbelly bubbling away in all its glory. It's a conversation listener sort of a place, that any script writer worth her salt would sponge dry.

Unlike most places of a greasy spoon genre, Blandford's isn't seedy or preferential and has an elegance in its manoeuvres. The wooden furniture, tables and benches are worn into place and provide a golden hue and timeless attitude. The long french cafe curtain wraps up the ambience, allowing a sense of place and secret escape. It also keeps the cold out when your inner icicles are popping a cog.

For those partial to mechanically recovered meat, this is sausage fry up heaven. Seriously good comfort eating. It might not appear at your table foaming with liquid nitrogen or warrant attendance at the Soho Food Feast but get off the grass, who cares ?

Who can be bothered banging on about sourdough and spelt when you can have processed plain white pre-sliced supermarket bread for your toast. They could even fry up Tongue-in-cheek.

There is no such thing as a flawed meal, moreover a welcome retreat from highfalutin, 'menu degustation' grandiloquence. Gordon, Fergus, Heston, sling your puffed-up butchers hooks. 

Blandford's was doing its worst while other recent cool cafe cubs were still doing wedgies on the Brit Cuisine trail.

No. There's nothing bland about Blandford's.