Clissold Park Cafe

andybrown

you'll still come here. and you should. 19th March 2009

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Is there a proverb relating to the idea that you can offer people rubbish as long as its surrounded with good things and they'll still buy it? Something like the converse of lipstick on a pig. Clissold Park Cafe is the epitome of okayishness in the epicentre of amazingitude.

Take the south-facing lawn and portico of a 200 year old Grade II listed mansion, facing a stretch of the (400 year old) New River, in the middle of a park frequented by the entire fecund, bicycling Guardian-reading cafe-frequenting population of Stoke Newington. In March, turn on the sun, and wait for the crowds. A child could run this place and turn a profit. It's a captive audience.

Look at it. Look at the photo. You already want to be there don't you? Of course you do, it's gorgeous.

So the food isn't great, so what? You're in a lovely park, get over it.

So you have to wait ages for it - sit in the lovely park, you ungrateful dolt.

This is the sort of establishment that really would need something specially bad, something unavoidably cack, to rob it of custom. And it doesn't have that, so it's always packed, because in this part of London, it's got the best surroundings imaginable - grass and trees and no cars and a lovely big grassy terrace and no competition.

Well, good luck to them. It's not often you can find somewhere that doesn't even need to try. I say that, there's a recession on, I half expect it to be closed by June.

But if it is, yours truly is going after that lease...