Noms and the City: Balfour - a damn fine brunch

It seems to me, my best beloved, that the mark of a civilised society is brunch. I cannot understand breakfast – it’s too early in the morning, and I’m not hungry, no matter what I have got up to the night before. No. It takes me a good couple of hours to want to eat, and when I do, I would infinitely prefer to partake of something savoury and nomsome that can get me through until afternoon tea, possibly via some sort of luncheon on the way.

I am supremely fortunate in my life that I am surrounded by like-minded folk, and so when I took my last-but-one jaunt down to the capitol and was met off the train by my beloved nephew, Julian, it seemed only right and proper that we wander the streets round Euston until we found a suitable venue for brunch.

It took a small while. We were distracted by the Black Books bookshop, and briefly considered a little café I had eaten at before until we discounted it for being too crowded. We stumbled on, lost in a haze of enjoyment at each other’s company and the promise of the weekend ahead, until we found Balfour on Marchmont Street.

From the World’s Scrap Book: Acqua Pazza

Ladies, Gentlemen, friends, if there is one thing I have learned in my travels about the continent and the Orient, it is the value of simplicity.

Take, for example, the famed Zen gardens of Kyoto, a Jewel of the East. Here the elegant simplicity of raked gravel disguises an graceful, emergent complexity to please the eye and sooth the soul – of course, the same has been said about my own sense of style, although naturally it simply is not done to blow one’s own horn. And, of course, some mornings (particularly after a lengthy soirée with Miss Peas) I myself look like I could do with a good raking over.

But I digress, for the point of my writings is to describe a dish I have encountered several times upon my travels, Acqua Pazza.