Walking up the steps into The Real Eating Company, in Cliffe High Street, I’m expecting, perhaps even wanting, to dislike it. For one thing, it’s not the Long Room. I used to go into the Long Room regularly, and save money by reading through all their papers and magazines, eking out a cup of coffee. You could sit there for hours on their comfortable chairs, and nobody would notice you.
This new place looks quite different. There’s a deli counter at the front, with legs of ham, and posh bacon, and smoked fish. There’s a huge array of cheese. The tables and chairs look pale and spindly, giving a sense of impermanence. You couldn’t sit here for hours and hours without feeling conspicuous. In The Long Room, it always felt like the middle of an endless afternoon; this new place is very mid-morning, very bustling, very ‘I’ve got to dash.’
I sit down and take my table. The breakfast menu comes. It is fine. I look up, slightly resentfully, at the ‘cheese menu’, or whatever it is, on the blackboard. Pah! What have they done? What is happening? I order a bacon sandwich, which isn’t on the menu. When it comes, it’s not so bad- four little sandwiches, in fact, on good bread. In the gents’ nothing appears to have changed. I sit and drink my tea. There is no rack of newspapers, of course, or array of magazines. But if I half-close my eyes, it might almost pass muster. We’ll see.