The Albion, hmm...

Albion claims to be a caff, but it's really more of a café with all the pretention that an e accent aigu requires. But the waitstaff were very friendly and it's on a very quiet street which makes sitting outside a real pleasure. I find myself quite torn.

I took my friends there for dinner on a Monday evening, so there was only a 5 minute wait for a table. Nice! While we were waiting we had a chance to ogle all the bread, fish pie & baked goods in their deli; that certainly made us hungry. While the menu is quite short, it does not contain any descriptions of the named food, so we spent a while learning about foods we hadn't heard of like kedgeree.

Our order came out surprisingly quickly, but we were dining quite late. I had the welsh rabbit, £4.50. It was tasty, the bread was very thickly sliced and you get two pieces. I think they must use the white loaf I saw in the bakery earlier. I prefer a chewier white bread myself, this was very crumbly instead, but overall, good marks. Firefly had the kedgeree, a curried fish & rice dish, served with a homemade curried tomato relish. Frankly I thought that the kedgeree was very bland and the curry tasted like it came straight from a bottle of Bart's curry powder. It rather had the consistency of a risotto, though with a longer-grained rice used. Firefly was happy with it though, costs about £9ish.

CD had the celeraic & apple soup, £4.50. I quite liked it while he only liked it after adding rather a lot of salt. He also had the fish pie, £9ish. A creamy fish and other fishy foods covered under a thick layer of mash, finished in the broiler. It took a while to cool down enough so that he could eat it, but once there he was quite happy. I thought that it was ok, but quite comforting. We also shared a serving of the beef dripping chips, but to be honest, they are more like petite wedges skin off, they seem more like roasted potatoes. Served very crisp, they made 2 out of 3 of us happy with the crispness, but I was surprised at how little I tasted the beef on them, £3ish.

All the portions were quite generous and next time I would probably go for a bap or the giant bowl of soup (which does not come with bread, if you're curious). Sitting outside was nice and quiet, which made talking easy. The waiters were friendly and fetched biscuits and cakes from the deli for us for our dessert, when we decided that the Eton Mess, while lovely, was more than we had room for. The cupcake has a very buttery icing and is about half icing, half cake. The gingerbread lady was tasty and not too sweet. The brownie with almonds was so moreish I ended up stealing almost half of CD's.

CD and I agreed that it felt a bit like Carlucci's or Ottolenghi, that wide-open space, white walls, cafe tables, deli. But it is the closest to my house of the three. I'd probably go back for a pot of tea (comes with a cozy) and a sweet or if I wanted a bap ( £5ish) and the weather was nice. It's certainly casual enough a place that I don't think I'd get annoyed looks from the waitstaff if I did.

And many thanks to Purple_Cloud at flickr for the great photo of the cafe, she has more photos of the cafe if you're interested.