Sue's Breakfast Bar holds a special place in my heart; it's a cafe that harkens back to a simpler time. A time when men and women got up at 5am and seemed to leave for work already covered in soot. When fat men sat down for lunch at 10am, slopping runny eggs into their mouths whilst slurping down oceans of sweet tea. A time that Eastenders seems to have been stuck in since the 1980s.
It's a proper greasy spoon cafe, is what I'm saying. Sure, the men are slightly cleaner when they enter, and the food isn't held together by an adhesive made out of 93% pure week-old chip fat, and there's a far higher proportion of students cramming stodge in their bleary-eyed faces at 11am, but it still has that feeling. And I'm glad. These are cafes that I grew up with; they were my grandfather's restaurant of choice and, when I went with my dad in his big van, it's where we inevitably got our grub from. To the generation that follows me, it won't mean much if these disappear, but to me there's a nostalgia that comes with them.
And the food's not as bad as it sounds, either. Bacon never tastes as good as when it's served here. read more