The day cafe · unlicensed half

The counter, half past eight to three

The counter is the front room, facing the lane. You order at it, pay at it, and carry what you ordered to a table yourself. There is no table service before the evening, and nothing at the counter is booked: you come and either there is a seat or you wait at the end of the counter, which is where we would sit anyway.

When the door is open

Tuesday to Friday: 8.30 – 3.00
Saturday: 8.30 – 3.00
Sunday: closed
Monday: closed; the kitchen is stripped and cleaned down
Hot plates from the board: 11.30 – 2.15
Bread, soup and the pudding: until 3.00, or until they have gone

The hot plates stop at a quarter past two because the same stove has to be cleared and set for the evening in the room behind. After that the counter keeps going on bread, soup and whatever came out of the second bake, and it keeps going until those run out, which on a wet Thursday can be well before three.

How an order at the counter works

The board is the same board the evening cooks from, minus the slow dish, which is not ready until the afternoon. One hot plate off it is written on a card by the till each morning, together with the soup and the pudding, so you can read the day without waiting for anybody to recite it.

By day the room behind the kitchen is open as unlaid seating: bare tables, no cloth, no reservation. At two o’clock we start laying it for the evening and ask the last of the counter tables to move to the front, which is the only moment in the day when we hurry anybody.

Tap water is on the sideboard and you help yourself. The counter is not licensed, so nothing alcoholic is served at it; the licence belongs to the room behind and only applies in the evening.

What the morning puts on the counter

Everything on the counter at half past eight was made after twenty to seven, except the dough, which was mixed the day before and left overnight in the cold room.

Twenty to seven The oven goes on and the dough comes out of the cold to be divided and shaped. The stock from yesterday is skimmed and put back on the heat.
Ten past seven First bake in. While it is in, the soup is built on whatever came in heaviest this week, which is the one line on the board that almost never changes shape.
Eight o’clock The beds above the lane are picked. What they give in that half hour is the garden plate for the day, and it is the reason the plate is described rather than named.
Half past eight The door. The card by the till is written and the bread comes through to the counter warm.
Half past eleven Hot plates start and the second bake goes in, so there is bread in the afternoon rather than apologies.
Quarter past two The stove is cleared, wiped and reset, and the evening prep starts in full view of whoever is still at the counter.

If a line on the board runs out at the counter we do not replace it with something bought in. It comes off the card, and the card is rewritten. On a good Saturday the pudding is gone by one.

Back to the board