Inside the Life of a Greasy Old Spoon

Maria, one of the lost souls form the novella 'I Went For A Walk And Never Came Back', describes her experience of working in an English all-day-breakfast-cafe.

My family and our dog Giuseppe moved from Italy to open a greasy spoon in Putney. It was called The Rowers Cafe. They named it so because Putney was the UK’s most important rowing centre since the second half of the 19th century. The paintings on the walls depicted the annual boat race and images of Putney Bridge. I guess mum and dad imagined posh Oxford and Cambridge University folk to frequent their establishment.

I was only four when we came to London, so I didn’t remember much about my Italian heritage. My earliest memory was frying an egg with my dad and burning my hand with hot oil. We came from Bari, in the Puglia region. I googled it once, and I was jaw-dropped. I thought it was stunning! What were mum and dad thinking!

I went to school in Putney, I worked in Putney, and since I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t get to leave Putney much. I started cleaning dishes with mum when I was twelve for pocket money, then I was promoted to filling the ketchup and vinegar bottles, and I started serving tables already last year after my fifteenth birthday.

Faded posters of the Queen and princess Di covered the green and white tiling, and big mugs of builder’s tea were served on red Formica tables. It was an English caf through and through, but notice how those colours make the Italian flag. Also, our dog, which was always found begging for bacon underneath customer tables, was named after Giuseppe Meazza – the greatest Italian football player of all time. Not that I give a damn about football, but I liked the name anyway.

We had the same menu for twelve years: Eggs, bacon and beans; eggs, bacon and sausage; eggs, bacon and chips; eggs, bacon, tinned tomatoes and fried slice; eggs, bacon, mushrooms and chips; eggs, bacon, beans, black pudding and fried slice; two eggs, two bacon and beans; two eggs, two sausages and beans...well, you get the gist. There were twenty-eight combos all together. The customers found it easier to point at the photo on the laminated menu. When COVID came, we were advised not to use laminated menus anymore, so we chalked it up on the blackboard with a numbered system. When I did my maths homework in the cafe after school, all I could think about when looking at numbers was breakfast combos. Nine plus eleven just meant swapping the fried slice for hash brown and adding an extra egg. But things got complicated when customers wanted to make their own combo. If, for example, they’d ask for two eggs, bacon, beans, mushrooms and black pudding, then we’d have to either recommend the number nineteen which was the same but with chips, or ask dad to give them the number nineteen without chips. Once, a customer asked for his fried slice to be made with brown bread instead of white because he thought it was healthier. But I don’t think all that frying oil would have made much difference. Legend has it, a customer once asked for gluten free toast and a vegan sausage, but I think my dad was just pulling my leg.

Our biggest profit was tea. We had an urn which held enough water for one hundred cups. It was all premixed, with tea bags, milk and sugar. The ingredients cost just a handful of change, and we got about one hundred pounds per urn. I always wondered what would’ve happened if a customer didn’t want sugar with their tea, but it never came up.

 Gwilym Rees. Copyright ©.

Extracts edited from the novella 'I Went For A Walk And Never Came Back'

Read the novella synopsis here.