HOWZAT

Kensington also has its share of the other sort of Americans, mostly on the High Street, the obese ones with the brightly coloured rainwear and baseball caps who are so fat they have to wear shorts even in winter. (I have never understood why fat people love shorts so much – one would have thought the part of their body that is below the knee might be the one part that would feel reasonably comfortable in grown-up clothes.)

They’re all heading for Whole Foods, one assumes, to fill their flabby faces. It used to be Barker’s back when Kensington was British, and was perfectly suited to its place and time, being crap but quaint. But now it’s a temple to option paralysis and waste, a giant compost-heap in waiting, an exercise in how much you can make a fat tourist drool with your cake display before it reaches its sell-by date and goes to landfill.

In this mood I went to Kensington Square Kitchen – newly opened right on the lovely old garden square itself – expecting a big, horrid, noisy, foreign, stupid place full of fat people, and was pleasantly surprised.

KSK is a little canteen for Kensington as it used to be. Nothing fancy. Rather dainty. Closes at six because nanny wants you home for bathtime. It’s been opened by some girl who used to teach cookery classes in a posh cutlery shop (as all Kensington girls used to do) and is all bright and fresh and painted white and eau-de-nil like an Edwardian nursery. And on the little corner shelves there are all scrummy cakes and savoury muffins, and the cupboard door is ajar and you can see the Marmite and the Tiptree jam, so you know it’s all terribly unpretentious.

It’s breakfast then brunch then lunch then tea then pip, pip, time for home. I went at about 1.30pm. There were still newspapers on tables and I had a Bellini made with the owner’s dad’s prosecco (I’m assuming that means she raided pater’s booze cupboard while he was out with the dogs), but not, alas, with cloudy white peach juice.

I had some smoked mackerel pâté (such a cook-school staple that I learnt it myself at prep school from the dinner ladies – just after they showed us how to blow smoke rings and hide the smell of gin with parsley), and it was really very good, very pale and interesting (so Kensingtonian) with its horseradish and chopped dill and first-rate hot buttered toast. (Hang on, I’m praising the toast – not usually a good sign.)

The day’s special salad was a bit boring – cold pumpkin may be seasonal but it’s food for livestock, not people. Spaghettini with prawns was fine, technically, but under-seasoned and dull. Chicken, leek and mustard pie was the opposite: tasted rich and honest but looked deflated. I hate a collapsed pie. What else did I have? Oh yes, a soup. Whatever.

A chap at the next table who had ordered a sausage sandwich was brought an egg and bacon burger with avocado and tomato salsa which looked lush and bright and lively, but he sent it back and duly received his two slabs of bread with some lonely sausage halves in. What a mug.

I like this place, even though it’s a bit daft. For breakfast there’s Neal’s Yard yoghurt and berries, boiled egg and soldiers, organic scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes… and the waitresses are pretty and sweet and not English but, hey, nobody in Kensington is. Breakfast is what I’d come for if I lived here. So if you do, then have your butler translate this review for you and then maybe give it a go.

Kensington Square Kitchen
9 Kensington Square, London W8
020-7938 2598

Meat/fish: 6
Cooking: 5
Kensingtoniness: 8
Score: 6.33
Price: cheap – tenner a head, maybe twenty.

The Horse and Chains
79 High St, Sparrows Herne, Bushey, Hertfordshire
020-8421 9907

Barry Hyman writes: “Opened in 1703 on the hill between Bushey and Bushey Heath, it was where laden brewers’ vehicles stopped for extra horses [and chains no doubt] to get up the steep hill on the journey from Watford to London. It was taken over by some shmendrick who reopened it as Snappers, a crappy fish restaurant. That went tits up. Recently, Dylan of Dylan’s Restaurant in Cockfosters took it on. An appeal from me, and our local museum, to reinstate the original historically important name was accepted, and it has now opened with a simple but appealing menu as a slightly posher than average pub/restaurant.”

E-mail feedme2@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere nice, and maybe we’ll go there together

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