Let Them Eat Rarebit

Squall 4, April/May 1993, pg. 19.

SQUALL has discovered a cafe in London where you can buy a fried egg for 14p or dine on Welsh Rarebit for 41p.

To get there you have to leave the lobby and walk along a corridor of oil paintings, including one canvas depicting an adoring Catherine of Aragon gazing lovingly into the eyes of a fat Henry the Eighth.

You pause a while, sigh romantically at the touching scene and descend a carpeted staircase to a shop that retails inhouse wines, brandy, champagnes and cigars. After another corridored display of medals, paintings and wigs you arrive finally, at a cafe where a homeless person might actually be able to afford the price of breakfast.

Unfortunately though it is for the use of Lords, MPs and Parliamentary staff exclusively, as the home of this bargain menu is the House of Commons Cafe, better known to some as ‘The Cocoon’.