Coby's

Time-Out London: Coby's

"It's just as well that some of us are not aiming to marry an injury-prone footballer, subsist on bizarre diets involving grapefruit and sugar-snap peas and devote our lifetime to shopping for 23-inch waist jeans. Otherwise how could I have resisted a large, juicy crêpe stuffed with crushed walnuts and dulce de leche (Argentinian caramel sauce), slathered with maple syrup, sprinkled with icing sugar and served with a big scoop of creamy coffee ice cream?

Coby's is the latest kosher café owned and staffed by good-looking young Israelis to open on Golders Green Road - a street that's currently doing its best to imitate Tel Aviv's café culture. The eponymous Coby also owns the small florist next door. Lunching ladies dressed in long, pretty skirts sit nibbling on the many salads inside the plant-filled café, while at the few outside tables, local hipsters gossip, sip coffee and watch the world go by. It's the sort of place where staff and customers know each other by their first names. Service can be, well, laidback if you're in an easy-going mood, or 'get a move on, love' if you're in a rush.

Coby's doesn't only do rich, sweet crêpes and healthy salads, of course. There are also omelettes, jacket potatoes, sandwiches, pizza and pasta on the menu. Over the course of two visits, I enjoyed melawach and houmous. Melawach is a Yemenite Jewish flatbread that's layered, flaky and cooked in a frying pan. Here, it was a warm puff pastry round served with coarse tomato sauce, pickled cucumber and hard-boiled eggs: delicious. Also highly enjoyable was the sunshine-yellow own-made houmous flecked with parsley, topped with sautéed mushrooms and accompanied by a sesame and sunflower seed-studded flatbread straight from the oven. Oh well, at least I can still fit into my size 4... shoes."
Sejal Sukhadwala

Time Out London Issue 1876: August 2-9 2006

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