Cafe Riva

Café Riva is a cute little establishment right next to the Borough tube station. I’ve been here before for breakfast and have had the yogurt with fruit and granola, toast and pancakes. The pancakes are pretty good but not the best I’ve had in London, particularly due to the bacon that was served (I like it thick and cooked in maple syrup). However I would come back for the toast and yogurt breakfast with freshly squeezed orange juice with a thin slice of an orange floating on the top. It’s small, so big groups wouldn’t work here and the service is quite good. It’s not somewhere I crave but for what it is, it’s good and useful.

It had been a dark and stormy night.
A mob gathered in London, hearts of stone, with eyes as black as night, a will to destroy, to hunt, to crush the souls of mortal men.
They gathered anywhere they could: in alleys, in doorways, in bars and in pubs, their sole purpose, their one true desire, their only conviction, with an appetite matched only by that of the dank and damned creatures of Hell itself, to drink, consume, devour, and engorge themselves on all the sweet poisons this fair city had to offer, to drink the rivers and stores dry, to conquer all that lay in their path and leave only destruction emptiness in their wake.
When the storm dissipated, when the crowds had gone, and the desolation was plain to see, only one remained.
Just one.
Him who tells this tale to you now.
Seeking nourishment for his aching body, tired soul and beaten limbs, he searched for a feast: for only a banquet of epic proportions could satisfy the rapacious and ravenous feelings which stirred deep within him; only a bounty fit for Hercules himself would appease and assuage the hunger and fill the canyon that had formed overnight, as if Cerberus of Hades itself had burrowed an infinite gorge deep within him demanding to be fed.
So he wandered, on this new quest for what seemed like an eternal age, through what would come to be known as Borough High Street until he found it: the place he was looking for, as if sent from the Heavens — Café Riva.
And he ate.
He gorged and he drank until his body his mind and his soul knew that he was complete; until he had replenished what had been lost, had replaced what had vanished.
What is here is good. And what is good is here.
And we shall return, whenever we require nutriment, whenever we are empty, whenever we are without what we need.
Whenever we’re hungover on a Saturday morning.
PS I’d recommend the Farmer’s breakfast, their biggest fry-​up ;)