Friday 23 November 2012

Your Handy Guide To Eating Out in Stratford-upon-Avon this Christmas

 
Best Latte: Boston Tea Party. A thick and slightly nutty concoction. Just like me.

Best Tea: Henley Street Tearooms for variety

Best Fried Breakfast Because A Christmas Shopping Requires Full-On Fuel: Henley Street Tearooms. If you sit indoors this place smells of fried food; but not the noxious, greasy miasma you sometimes get in the less reputable establishments; but that piquant bouquet that promises crispy edges, plump yolks, crumby toast with actual butter and bacon with just the right amount of chin-drip. If it's a rotten day outside grab a table by the kitchen - which is not behind closed doors - and envelop yourself in a warm fug of comfort eating. This place serves a decent plateful of food, a mere fiver, an excellent way of fuelling the shopping spree. Try the champagne breakfast to start the day with Christmas joy and bonhomie. Just make sure to get someone else to carry your oxygen tank.

Best Cream Cakes Because At Some Point You Have To Buy Something For You: Vienna Patisserie. My personal recommendation is the coffee éclair although it is considerably sweeter and more cloying than its chocolate and cream counterpart; but this place is cakes without compromise. Full on wodges of cream, confectioner's custard and flaky pastry. And be careful. One sugar-loaded cake and a large latte and you will have to be tethered to your chair. Latte is pleasant enough but to be honest they could knock up a Nescafe and froth it up by blowing through a straw and you would be too off your face on sugar to notice.

Best Place To Take Guests: The Old Thatch is ideally where you bring guests on their first visit to Stratford to get a sort of Tudorish Elizabethany sort-of-Shakespearean feel. Think Birthplace with wi-fi and chips. The Hathaway Tea Rooms is useful if you want to escape from the relentless array of High Street shops and remind your visitors that you live somewhere quite historical and touristy. Guests might get a vicarious thrill from the fact that it is Hathaways-if-not-actually-the-cottage and you get to make dreadful puns about how the place 'hath a way' with coffee.

Best Defence Against Zombie Attack: When the town is swarming with people it is going to be difficult to make a quick getaway. In the event that it turns out to be a George A. Romero apocalypse at least the zombified masses will be slow and shuffling, making a swift getaway possible. Although, yes, you might have difficulties distinguishing between dedicated Christmas shoppers and actual zombies. In the event that the apocalypse is a World War Z scenario unless you're in, say, in McDonalds at the point of the outbreak, sitting in front of those large smashable windows you're pretty much buggered.

Best Takeout Coffee Cups: Costas, without a doubt. Starbucks cups will do if you want to advertise your live-in-Stratford-but-am-really-metrosexual-urban-sophisticate credentials. Even though they have replaced the modishly Expressionist tree trunk etchings with colouring-book cartoons, these can still be carried with ironic insouciance, or 'art is dead' round-shouldered weltschmertz. Costas provides a better balance between being a Stratfordian, lamenting the creeping globalization of the town centre, but not above treating the fact with humour. Bright, cheesy designs modelling ever-so-trendy crafting-your-home-made-decs hobby chic.

Best Place to Escape the Cold: As a rule of thumb, if you are cold, then anywhere will do. For sheer ambience though, the White Swan Hotel does an unbeatable number in cosy armchairs, dim and flickering candlelight, rosy-cheeked content and soporific comfort.

Best Place To Start Writing The Great British Novel Because This Time Next Year ...: The larger the establishment, the more likely you are to have the necessary peace and quiet for creative composition. Hathaways is fairly quiet and has a few places to hide away and make a coffee last three hours. If, however, you want to Be Seen, then your best bet is the more recognised coffee shops such as Starbucks or Costas. There will be moments when you can barely hear yourself think over the clacking keyboards of a thousand budding J. K. Rowlings.

Best Place For Fomenting Political Unrest Because the Relentlessness of Capitalism Is getting You Down: The Boston Tea Party which has the right hipster credentials and plenty of space for large groups where you can sit in a circle, discuss renegade politics, found new and subversive art movements that will shake the foundations of establishments, not forgetting to outline all this in the publication of a radical journal full of firebrand rhetoric and avant garde artwork. And with a title ending in '-- werke'.

Best Place If You Are Not Really a 'Christmas' Person: If you are one of those unfortunate souls who feels ill at the thought of the turkey and mince pies, get to El Greco. Though they do have the trappings of Christmas, the menu alone will waft you to emerald green oceans, and hot white sands. Stuffed to the gills with souvlaki, kalamari and stifados, washed down with Mythos beer or ouzo, you can wallow in the memories of summer. Which is really, when you think about it, not all that far away.

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