188 Stoke Newington High Street
A pot of Rooibos tea
I am absolutely parched after my salty soy sauce lunch, so decide to call in at Lemon Monkey for a cup of tea. A relative new comer to Stoke Newington High Street, it is a place that seems to have accidentally spilled out of Church Street. The interior is a junk shop and old grocery store cross; mismatched tables and chairs along with a couple of old shop counters showing off the cakes and sandwich fillings.
The brick wall behind the main counter is painted a dusky grey white colour and the wood cladding is in a Farrow & Ball-like sage green. What looks like a restored shop front sits above the joist that passes through the middle of the space. Painted in gold leaf, with a 3D effect drop shadow, it says W.A.HIGGS.
The overall effect is somewhat let down by cheap laminate flooring that is starting to buckle and peel in places. It is also a deli and stocks the kind of expensive items you would expect in the gentrified enclave of Stoke Newington—Maldon sea salt, organic Belvoir cordials, Maille mustard—you get the picture. I choose to sit at the end of a big, long table. A man and woman sit at the other end and from their conversation I deduce that he is some kind of writer and she a film maker. My pot of tea arrives and I sit surveying my surroundings and tuning in and out of the conversation at the end of the table that shifts from politics and the cuts to Boris Johnson’s indiscretions.
As I finish my tea I get up to have a closer look at the stock on the shelves. I ask one of the waitresses if they found the shopfront during the renovations. She doesn’t know, but the owner appears and tells me they did. It was discovered when they removed a false ceiling, and I notice it is still behind its original glass. I explain what I am doing and tell her that she is my gentrified English tea stop. She responds by saying many of their products are French and Italian. Good point, and on reflection, my tea came from South Africa. Maybe they are just gentrified Hackney then?
My love hate relationship with Stokey
There’s something about a lot of the people in Stoke Newington, that makes me want to punch them. Now that probably says more about me than it does about them, but it’s an extreme reaction all the same. For me the offenders come in two types. Firstly, the typical young, trendy Hackney types in their tight jeans, rolled to ten centimetres above the ankle and worn with deck shoes. Their look is completed with oversize plastic sunglasses and a trilby type hat. Secondly, and even more annoyingly, the self-satisfied, trendy thirty and forty-somethings with their three wheeler push chairs and children called Arabella or Tobias. I think it must be my nicely balanced, chip on each shoulder, working class roots coming out. But… I really like a nice cup of coffee in the Spence, or a lovely Greek salad in The Parlour, so it’s complicated. These rather nice cafés are only there because of the left-of-centre gentrifiers seeking out their organic this, and gluten free that.
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