Masters Diner @ Covent Garden

Courtesy of Google

Masters Diner at Covent Garden is almost hidden, practically sharing a storefront with a newsagent and squeezing their doors side-by-side. My friend and I doubled back on the pavement and popped inside before noontime to take away a coffee (hot chocolate, in my case of a set of immature tastebuds) for our walk to Oxford Street before the ballet performance of La Bayadère at the Royal Opera House started.

Interested in the cosiness of the place and the buzzing, alluring kitchen behind the counter, we returned for a post-show lunch, if it can still be called 'lunch' at 4pm.

We were sat down by friendly staff, and picked up our menu from the side of the table, diner-style. The place serves burgers, club sandwiches, ciabatta, breakfast food, jacket potatoes, dessert cakes and pies, coffee, chocolate – the sort of food one would encounter fifty percent of the time in this country among eating places.

I ordered a Covent Garden Club sandwich, which was a toothpick-reinforced double-decker sandwich with regular white (rather flattened) toast, filled with lettuce, melted cheese, beef slices, mushrooms, mustard and mayonnaise. And not to forget the random topping of alfalfa sprouts on the top. I'm not particularly fond of mustard, so I quite regretted getting this sandwich.

The sandwich, which was warm and fresh, fell apart annoyingly easily like any other club sandwich. I rejoice when biting into burgers and sandwiches without accidentally pulling out all the filling with my teeth, so the tougher beef slices did not work well here. The amount of meat and veggies were pretty generous, which my hungry stomach was very grateful for.

I do love mayonnaise, but I had to use the toothpicks to scrape out as much as I could of the yellow, vile, stinging mustard. I remember spending ages staring at the menu and deciding what to get, by scrutinising the contents of each burger/sandwich to find a combination which I really like.

It's pretty phenomenal, what hunger can do to my common-sense.

The mushrooms were plump, juicy and a real treat, but were quite disconnected from the fillings and didn't go that well with the tough beef texture.

Master's Diner is obviously not somewhere you would travel halfway across the country for, but is definitely a life-saver if you're looking for a cheap, reliable eating place which serves a wide variety of hearty meals in the heart of Covent Garden.

Master's Diner
32 Henrietta St
London
WC2E 8NA
020 7240 9266

Greggs

I didn't have a good impression of Greggs right from the start.

The first time I heard about it was when I chanced upon an article on the Daily Mail, in which a Greggs employee acts like a gassed eight-year old and decides to badmouth artisan bread-maker, Paul Hollywood, for doing the plaited loaves all wrong and speaking like an Enid Blyton narrator. Accompanying the article was this picture of a Greggs shopfront:

I am not a big fan of the storefront. It looks more like a bookstore than a bakery to me.

The other thing is, you can't insult Paul Hollywood, you simply can't.

Just look at all that adorable-ness.

Bam. No one can make bread-making look more epic than the Hollywood.

The whole thing was probably a publicity stunt by Greggs, but nevertheless I chose Greggs, out of curiosity, as a lunch option while shopping in Hounslow.

The café section was preceded by a bakery section. I think. There were about two shelves, which contained doughnuts, muffins, and loaves which looked very neat and identical.

Moving on to the café section, they had yogurts, salads, pasties, cakes, Danish pastries, croques, sandwiches, pasta, coffee, and other quintessential café food items. The prices were really appealing, with pasties costing about £1.50 and a bowl of pasta for £2.99. 

A steak bake pasty and an iced apple cream Danish cost me exactly £3.

The steak bake was puff pastry filled with beef stew. I loved the warm, creamy and hearty taste of the beef stew, which were quite generous chunks.

Emma, my food buddy for the day, tried some of my dessert. After the meal, I commented, "I do wish that there was more apple in it, though."

She replied, "It was supposed to have apple in it?"

The Danish pastry sandwiched a thin layer of apple and sauce under a thick poof of whipped cream, storybook style. The apple's taste was drowned out under the cream which was a bit much, and I could only occasionally feel its gooey texture.

Greggs is a good option for a cheap café lunch, with tasty-looking pastries and a few other limited options for savoury items, which includes customisable sandwiches (Emma: "The lady took forever to make my sandwich, and look, all my onions are falling out.") and fish fingers. Not somewhere to return to day-after-day, but alright when on a budget and for convenience's sake. Their next step will be to redesign their banner and stop being so cocky and dissing my Hollywood.

Greggs (Hounslow)

181 High Street

Middlesex

TW3 1BL

Tel: 0208 577 2890