Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Fowl play

The restaurant is full of groups of men with shaved heads and couples on first dates. There will be no second dates

issue 29 April 2017

Cafe Football is in the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, east London, a shopping centre with a faulty name. It isn’t in the west, and it isn’t in a field. (The original Westfield is in Shepherd’s Bush. That is in the west, but not in a field. It is by the A40 and it is like America without the joy.) Westfield Stratford City sits in a puddle of chain cafés and restaurants and shops. It has been on my review list for three years, 2.9999999 of which I have spent cowering in north London.

Stratford was — shall we call it renovated? — for the London Olympic Games in 2012, and it is now a windy building site full of air pollution and hipsters and thwarted hopes. I would like to see a friendly tornado rumble off the Thames to tear the buildings apart and save us all from having to look at them.

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