The Elephant House

Dear Readers, 

I am writing this post LIVE through the medium of Web 2.0 and modern technology aboard the East Coast train service on my way back from Edinburgh - that finest of Scottish cities - where I have been enjoying the festival with SIBF and had the pleasure of bumping into my FSAF who can be seen in THIS play til the end of August. 

I adore Edinburgh and was thrilled to discover there are more amazing cafes there than ever before, but seeing as we were only in town for TWENTY-NINE hours - yes - TWENTY-NINE - I thought I would write to you about my ultimate fail safe Edinburgh cafe - The Elephant House. 

I first set foot in this cafe in the summer of 1998 when I was performing in the festival. It was a sort of hallowed ground for me - a secret, warm, dry spot away from the exhaustion of the twisting cobbled roads and underways. (It was very wet throughout the whole of that August, and I only had one pair of shoes with me that I was wearing for both performance and normal life. My feet suffered, Dear Reader, oh how they suffered!) Turns out 'twas also a special place for JK Rowling who wrote most of Harry Potter there. 

As the name might suggest, The Elephant House is filled with elephants. I don't know why, I've never asked, nor do I particularly wish to know. Normally, I might find that type of interior decor irritating, but here it is perfect.

This is a completely unpretentious cafe. It doesn't use an 'aeropress' for your coffee, it doesn't sell amazing organic cakes, but it also doesn't matter. This is the place to come after a hard day on the fringe. Order a cafetiere for two and a piece of hot chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream.

This is old-skool chocolate fudge cake. Squishy, chewy, thick and gooey. The vanilla ice cream tastes like something you used to have round your best friend's house for a treat on a Saturday afternoon and when it's combined with a rainy, cold Edinburgh evening it is heavenly.

What's more, The Elephant House epitomises that most wonderfully dazzling - almost impossible - dizzying sense of Geography that comes form spending any amount of time in Edinburgh, even TWENTY-NINE hours: look out of one window and you'll see a castle on a hill, look out of another and you'll see Arthur's Seat. The whole city is straight out of a fantasy landscape.

So whilst you may well find a more modern / hipster vibe in some of Edinburgh's other coffee shops (I really wanted to go into the coffee shop inside Avalanche records on the Grassmarket, but what with our TWENTY-NINE hours only we didn't have time) if you're looking for something oddly comforting and nostalgic (at least through my eyes anyway) then The Elephant House it is. 

And if you're looking for something completely different, why not go to the caff down the road and have a deep fried mars bar instead? 

Silver Whimsy x

The Nordic Bakery

Hello Readers!

Being British, I must commence with a comment on the weather; isn't it wonderful! All my tea dresses are out of the wardrobe and I am basking in the sunshine.

What perfect timing, then, to bring you the first Silver Whimsy Review from the Top Ten List of Cafes across London!

I arranged to meet my Floral-Shirted-Actor-Friend (FSAF) at The Nordic Bakery on the hottest day of the year so far. This was simultaneously a good and bad idea; whilst we had delightfully silky smooth coffees and carbohydrate-drenched cinnamon buns, The Nordic Bakery is more suited to a frost-bitten winter day rather than a sun-drenched April eve.

The Nordic Bakery might not immediately seem to fall into the Aesthetic of Whimsy. But, you see dear Reader, I LOVE the clean lines, the quasi-clinical atmosphere of the wood pannelled walls and as my FSAF commented, the sweating sauna like effect of the glass fronted window onto Golden Square. Oh dear, I'm not painting a good picture am I..?

Let us now move on to an explanation of why the cappuccino's from The Nordic Bakery are the best in central London (excluding Soho). It isnlt just the contents of the coffee cup that make this frothy-drink so pleasing, it is the cup itself and the sanitorium-esque tray on which it is presented.

It all ties in with the 'safe-space' aesthetic of The Nordic Bakery. There is something intensely soothing about the muted colours and the super-shiny and smooth Moomin sized coffee-cups. The contents therein do not disappoint; the ratio of coffee to froth is perfect (although this is a more Australasian and less Italian version of the cappuccino so do not expect an adrenalin-filled caffeine hit); this, then is a coffee to linger over rather than a pick-me-up-let-me-out-of-this-crazy-city-help-I'm-wearing-stilettoes-it's-rush-hour-and-I'm-going-to-be-late kind of coffee.

And then we move onto the piece de resistance du Nordic Bakery. Oh yes, their famed and much-devoured by Whimsy cinnamon buns. The bakery is housed in the basement of the cafe, so freshly baked cakes, buns and breads are constantly brought up into the cafe. The cinnamon bun is a multi-layered delicacy of thick buttery pastry drenched in cinnamon-loaded goodness. My FSAF could detect a hint of something else behind the cinnamon - an almost liqueur like flavour that he couldn't pin down - if you go please send in your thoughts about what this could have been. The best cinnamon buns are soft and squishy inside and sticky and chewy on the outer corners.

I have never ventured into tasting any of their other cakes, but the Tosca Cake sounds most tempting.

So, if you're stuck on Oxford Street and need some respite from the crazed shoppers and endless roadworks, head down Carnaby Street and wend your way t Golden Square; there a sanitorium clam awaits you.

Cinnamon and Springtime,

Silver Whimsy x