Randomness Guide to London Menu

The Place Below is a totally vegetarian cafe in the crypt of St Mary Le Bow church on Cheapside. Being in the City, it's mostly geared towards breakfast and lunches, and indeed doesn't open at all in the evenings or on weekends.

The menu is small, and changes daily: one soup, one hot dish, one quiche, and one salad. (As Charles Campion points out in the review linked below, this is a good sign. The website mentions that they've been in existence for nearly 20 years — another good sign.)

The location means that it gets very very busy at peak times; they recognise this, and go some way towards alleviating it by offering £2 off the hot dish, quiche, and salad of the day if you eat in between 11:30am and noon or 1:30pm and 2:30pm. Also, everything is available as takeaway.

Kake last visited around 2004, when she was still vegan. I called in on a Friday morning at about 11am, and it was completely empty, unsurprisingly, although a few besuited types wandered in later for takeaway coffees.

Most of the breakfasty options were pastries and things, and not vegan, so I had the "Healthbowl", a concoction of short-grain brown rice, lentils, and various vegetables, served on a sheet of nori (price as of 2007 is £5.65 eat-in, £4.45 takeaway). I wasn't convinced by the raw mushrooms or almost-raw sugar snap peas in this; but I suppose that's what you get if you order something with "Health" in the name, and I did really like the lentil and rice bit. (Note that the Healthbowl isn't usually available until lunchtime, which begins at 11:30am, but they took pity on a hungry vegan and got the kitchen to do me one a bit early.)

Lunchtime is potentially better for vegans; the healthbowl is always vegan, and there's always a vegan soup. The hot dish is vegan on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the salad is often vegan too. It's worth noting that "dairy free" on the menu actually means vegan. (Everything in this paragraph confirmed by email, September 2007.)

They certainly used to have soya milk available for tea and coffee, and I expect they probably still do.

They also do fresh juices (the apple is really good, tastes of apples, unlike the stuff you buy in cartons from the supermarket) and what I hear is some very good home-made lemonade — in 2004, these were all £1.70 eat-in and £1.40 takeaway, not sure of current prices.

See also:

• Time Out review
• Charles Campion review