The far eastern cheese hunt

Neal's Yard Dairy have three shops: Covent Garden, London Bridge and Bermondsey, with the latter said to be under the arches of Druid Street. I have used both the first and second of these and thought it was time to try the third, which I understood also to be where they kept their cheese, with two or three arches doing service for a temperature controlled cave in Cheddar Gorge. There was a Bullingdon Stand reasonably nearby on Tower Bridge Road, as it happens the most easterly stand bar one south of the river.

The record

So Thursday past, I pulled a Bullingdon at Waterloo and headed off to what is known to TFL as Tanner Street. Parked up and walked the length of Druid Street - all kinds of interesting businesses in the arches and mostly housing estate on the other side of the road. For example, at least one cider (or perhaps cyder) brewery and at least one cider bar. And to think that when I was young, the few remaining cider houses were out in the country and catered mainly to hardened drinkers of one sort or another.

Cider bar

Temporary measure?

I also came across a steel sheet covering a hole in the road, such a sheet being among the catastrophic outcomes mentioned at reference 1.

The baker

And a commercial baker, open to the public on Saturday mornings. Talk of sour dough not encouraging but I thought that it might have been possible that they sold decent white bread, hard to come by these days. Sadly, inspection of their website at reference 2 suggests not. All fancy bread and cakes, rather after the Canadian model we came across and noticed at reference 4. Also mixed up with Neal's Yard.

But no cheese shop, so I phoned them up and, over a rather bad line, I thought that they said that it had closed and that I had best go back to London Bridge. But lunch first, so I turned into the Doodle Bar of reference 5, a place which ought to be scored as a fake, decked out as it is with all sorts of architectural salvage. Including the bumpy things hung up middle right, which look rather like long versions of the things they have at the end of suburban railway platforms to stop you walking over said ends.

The bar

The wheels outside

Across the road

To drink, I took a 2015 Amalaya Reisling from Argentina. Good. To eat, a beef burger full of goo but also good. Beef rare and probably posh; reared on salt marsh or something like that. All in all a bit like eating lasagne, less the tomato.

The place was not busy at lunch time, but one could play ping pong. And it had the look of a place which might be busy late evenings. Perhaps not quite the place for pensioners sporting fluorescent yellow cycling helmets.

The flats across the road looked more or less immediately post war to me, perhaps on the site of bombed out, east end slums. Old enough to still have pointed roofs and chimneys. Perhaps also iron framed casements, since replaced with plastic.

Last stop along Druid Street was to inquire at Bermondsey scrap about drain covers. Nothing doing, nor was I clear what did do. And while Bermondsey Metals Recycling Limited is indeed at Druid Street, the link that should take me to their website actually takes me to a cleaning contractor at the same address - while the chap I talked to did not look as it he ever sported the marigolds. Mystery.

Past the slender white pillars holding up one side of the Shard and wondered, not for the first time, how terror proof they were. They had installed some of those innocuous looking black bollards between the pillars and presumably the security boys thought that was enough, although looking up, one wondered.

And so into the cheese shop at London Bridge where they explained that I should have gone to Lucey Street, maybe 10 minutes from Druid Street. Or as their website says, Arch 8, Apollo Business Park, Lucey Way, which was not what my telephone said at all. Perhaps they are better at cheese than websites. Perhaps I will try again next time.

Topped the cheese up with a couple of artichokes from a proper market lady in Borough Market, perhaps one of just a select few left, survivors of the tsunami of lean, brown foodies with beards. And so pedalled back to Waterloo, to take position three at the top of the ramp.

Position three, left

Cooked

BH cooked the artichokes a few days later, taking around an hour in our largest saucepan, not much used these days there are mostly just the two of us. Artichokes not bad at all, taken with a little melted butter. The serving suggestion in the book, involving some Frenchified yellow sauce, did not sound like our thing at all.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/diy.html.

Reference 2: https://stjohnrestaurant.com/a/restaurants/bakery.

Reference 3: https://www.artisinbakery.com/. The Canadian bakery. With thanks to the cousin in Ottawa who took us there.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-puzzle-solved.html. The origin of reference 4. With the snap being dated 5th October, 2014, which must have been shortly after we arrived in Ottawa.

Reference 5: https://www.thedoodlebar.com/.