Columbian Beans

I've been less than kindly in the past when making comment about the wares being offered on Portabello Road, and if it wasn't for the special coffee place at the bottom end where Jules sent us with instructions to buy a special breed of Columbian beans we may not have bothered to grace the markets with our presence.

Mid week of course is without the crowds, and it may have been the sunshine or perhaps I kept my prejudices in my top pocket for a bit, but it seems that there was more of the "old" Portobello than was visible last year; more door knobs and shooting sticks and postcards from another era.   Some of them were indeed reproductions, but they didn't seem to be as deeply buried under Princess Diana memorabilia as they have been in our most recent visits.

Without wanting this to turn this into a food blog, yesterday we stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's "Recipease" establishment in Notting Hill just on lunch time, and the pork belly, caramelised onion and chilli jam pizza was exquisite as was the fizzy crushed ginger drink, with prices so fair (read "cheap" to a person with a wallet full of Aussie dollars), that we cleared our diaries and manipulated our schedules just a tad so that we could arrange a little encore today, after all it was on the way.

If we were to make a tiny criticism, the name of the place seemed a bit flat to us.   Other than the obvious "recipes" phonetic it made no sense, until we asked the incredibly personable, and doubtless well trained young waitress if we could have a second plate to enable us to share our pizza.

"Easy Peasy!"  she exclaimed and ran off with a smile to arrange just that.