The Corner Café in Netherfield is another local community establishment that deserves another look. It is a bright and friendly establishment that seems to be focussed on your standard café fare with a few extra items. More about those at the end of the post, but just for now lets just assume that I came in here looking for some sort of breakfast scenario, I could pretend otherwise but it was just one of those food hunting days when my stomach was in charge and my head was planning some sort of culinary specialness for tea later on at home. Ok Stomach part of the brain why don’t you just fill us all in then?

OK I will admit that at this point of the post it does appear that I am focussing on the Set Breakfast section of the menu, and to be honest that is true, but hear me out. I do find that at this sort of place a really good way to check out the standard is to opt for the ‘all day breakfast’ scenario. In the same way that many chefs will make a prospective employee cook them an omelette or a simple fried egg to see if they have the basics, my ‘interview’ if you like in a café is to give me a decent breakfast plate.

The first thing that hit me was that even in the breakfast department there is quite a fair amount of choice and variation with even two vegetarian options out of the eight choices. That is a pretty respectable 25% for the vegetarians which is not too shabby. If I am honest there is too much option here for me, I don’t need to think, I just need to explete the words ‘all day breakfast’ in some sort of lunchtime Tourette syndrome.

I am pretty sure that I could have done a little negotiation here to get my perfect combination, but instead I played the game and ordered a ‘Full Breakfast‘. Why you might ask did I choose this, as I am sure that regular readers will spot one of the things I keep on saying I don’t like; the tinned tomato. Well yes that is true, but I wanted fried eggs instead of scrambled which ruled out my first choice of Set 4 for £5 which was ‘Scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, mushroom, beans, and black pudding’, and I really wanted to try the black pudding too.

So what was the verdict? Well it was pretty positive to be honest. The sausage, while not an amazing gourmet effort, was quite decent, it was well cooked and fairly meaty. Considering where I am sitting I have no complaints, bacon was good, fried eggs were fair too (yolk could have been a little runnier if I am being picky). The black pudding slice was fair enough as well, not gourmet by any means, but I wouldn’t complain if my Mum served this up on a Sunday Morning breakfast treat. The hash browns were OK, large is the main thing, I am not that excited about them at the best of times but I had a cunning plan to utilise my tinned plum tomato. I mixed them both together and found that they were a pair meant for each other, one of the rare cases in the standard café where two ingredients combined are greater than the sum of the individual. Should I say that there was too much food here? perhaps that would be somewhat churlish, as well as the beans I had two whole slices of toast and a mug of tea. It was hard work but I did my best, purely in the interest of research for my fellow man (and woman).

Here at the Corner Café you can get all of your standard offerings in a sandwich, cob, or panini; “ham, ham and cheese, egg, chicken, chicken and sweetcorn, tuna mayo, prawn mayo….” you get the idea, oh and did I mention in the hot cobs?  “bacon, bacon and sausage, bacon and egg…”. Basically what I am saying is that there is nothing to be afraid of if you want a vanilla café lunch.

But if you want something slightly more interesting than you might expect at a greasy spoon then might I suggest the following? “Lambs Liver and Mash with bacon, onions, peas and gravy” for £4.50? No, well how about “Welsh Rarebit“, billed as cheese on toast with a poached egg on top for  £3? (I think they might have got a hybrid of a croque madame and a eggs benedict and cheese on toast here all mixed up), If not that then well I propose either a ‘Spanish Omelette with chips and salad’ for £4.50, or a “Bowl of Cream of Broccoli Soup” for £3.

I know you just want a full English Breakfast, and I don’t blame you either.

You can find the Corner Café on… well… as you might expect … a corner. Address wise it is at 40 Victoria Road in Netherfield just across the road from the Co-op and next door almost to Robinsons Butchers.