This is the first in a series of articles celebrating the great and the good of the proper caff -never a café – from fry ups to decent sarnies. We have some great ones coming up, including Bar Bruno, the Regency Café and E Pellici, but we start with personal favourite Gino’s Coffee Bar in Marylebone.
Technically the address is 18 Great Central Street, but you will know it as the caff opposite Marylebone Station on the other side of the road to the left. Great Central Street is a bit misleading by the way as it is not exactly a major thoroughfare but really a side street to the station, which was the home of the Great Central Railway.
Anyway, back to the stuff that matters. The great Gino, he of the legendary moustache, now seems to have retired and his wonderful daughter has taken over. Nothing has changed, which is a good thing. Gino’s is only open in the mornings until late afternoon and so naturally specializes in breakfasts.
There are a number of set menus to choose from which are priced at about £11 for breakfast, toast and tea. Set Menu A pictured above will offend some purists as it includes beans and chips, but I’m good with that so long as it is both. Beans on their own, no. Chips on their own, no. But together is a special type of magic. And in any event its just a matter of picking one of the set menus and adding or subtracting menu choices to get to the one you want, from fried bread and mushrooms to eggs any way you want. It’s not rocket science. The quality of the ingredients is high. Bacon proper rashers cooked crisply if asked, and I have confidence in the sausages enough to eat them, which is not true everywhere.
The also do lunch specials (albeit available at any time) of which I can particularly recommend the Cumberland sausage and mash with onion gravy. Also, a good range of salads and sandwiches are made to order. Nothing here is unexpected, but everything is very ronseal – it does what it says on the tin!
Décor is unvarnished caff style – functioning tables and chairs, with an outdoor section for when it is sunny. No radio or music is played to distract from the unalloyed pleasure of eating a top notch fry up. Customers are a mixture of passengers and Chiltern Railways staff from the station, guests from the Landmark Hotel next door seeking a better quality of breakfast, the inevitable construction workers and then less inevitable John Simpson, the BBC foreign correspondent.