168 Dalston Lane,
London E8 1NG website
Monday - Friday: 8am - 7pm
Saturday: 10am - 6pm
Sunday: 10am - 5pm
Cappuccino - £2
Fresh juice (big) - £3.50
Soup of the day, with bread - £4.50
Canvas bag - £2
✓ Free Wi-Fi
✓ Friendly staff
✓ Indoors seating
✓ Outdoors seating
✓ Organic ministore
On rainy days I take the bus to work, I sit upstairs and look out for a bit before taking my book out and forgetting all about London. The times in which I am most aware of my surroundings, therefore, are just after getting on, and just before my destination. For this reason, I have been eyeing Healthy Stuff from the top of the 38 bus for a while now, and I have been meaning to pop in for just as long. Today I did. Before I get to the inside, though, let me tell you how lovely this place looks from a bus. It's a little corner café, strikingly pretty among rather unattractive old shops and crumbly old houses. It's painted a happy shade of light blue with a thin, tall, illustration-like sign that comes out funny in pictures, and has a cast iron railing at the top, like a crown. It could just as well be called "We're SO happy to see you" so firmly it ticks the welcoming box.
Expectations are high, then, when I finally make it through the door. It's 6PM so it's quiet and I find a place to sit. There's a long table with chairs and bench in front of the window, and in the morning this must be a really lovely place to come to work, but a fellow Mac user is typing away quietly, so I choose one of the other two, smaller tables, which gives me a nice view of the counter. Benny, is working tonight, and you can immediately tell that he owns and loves the place because he never stops cleaning and tidying everything - if you look around, the place is impeccable, actually - he and Marina, I learn, opened this café a year ago, when Ella, their daughter, was born. If you go to their brilliant website, you can actually see a picture of them in front of the café that reminds me of that of my grandparents when they opened their own bar, after they built it, ages ago. It's modernly old fashioned, I really like it.
But i digress; once inside I order a cappuccino, which comes quickly, and is delicious - the froth, in particular, is super dense and creamy. I also order one of their fresh juices, the one that sounds most unfriendly, it's called Green and contains spinach, cucumber, lime, apple and celery. Benny makes it quickly in the juicer, brings it to me and then proceeds to dismantle it calmly, and wash every part carefully before re-assembling. Within minutes, the juicer could be sold as new on ebay, nice touch, Benny.
Green is certainly so; it's also tall and foamy, and looks at me helpfully, oozing anti-cancer claims (claims which I don't necessarily believe, but am brainwashed into noticing). Yes, Green, you look great, but are you going to upset me once you're in my mouth? 'Cos your matey Cappuccino was pre-tttty good, y'know?
I ponder this for a quite a while, and use the time to have a look around. Healthy Stuff is not just a café, why, it also sells lots of healthy stuff! Organic fruit and veg, Ecover's everything, including nappies (not sure why this struck me), and all sorts of nice food and cupboard essentials, all mega healthy. I ask Benny, and he tells me that it's perfectly fine to purchase something that might not be in their menu to have at your table, at no extra charge. So for example, if you wanted matcha, which they sell by the box, you could buy the pot and take it to Benny and he would make you a latte. Or if you wanted an avocado and tofu combo, you could buy the two, get a plate, and eat them. I say this because I've been surprised to find cafés that don't like this, and either don't let you do it, or charge you extra for the pleasure.
Pretty things are all around: there's a canvas bag with an illustration of the café made by Ashley Le Quere as part of the East London Mornings project; the menu is being painted on the wall by Moomintroll and there's a little Moominpappa under a line of bunting on the coffee machine; a crane eats a bowl of the soup of the day and tells you all about it.
By the time I am ready for my Green, it looks like this, so I give it a big stir and start sipping away...
Diane, if you ever come this way that fresh juice is worth a stop.
By Jove, this is good juice! The king of juices, the juice-god of mount Olympus! Thanks Benny, this is amazing, I'm pretty sure this wouldn't work if I tried it at home. Besides, I would be using a masher rather than a juicer and we already know that doesn't work, see the duck pâté i tried to make with masher instead of food processor. Not good.
On rainy days I take the bus to work, I sit upstairs and look out for a bit before taking my book out and forgetting all about London. The times in which I am most aware of my surroundings, therefore, are just after getting on, and just before my destination. For this reason, I have been eyeing Healthy Stuff from the top of the 38 bus for a while now, and I have been meaning to pop in for just as long. Today I did. Before I get to the inside, though, let me tell you how lovely this place looks from a bus. It's a little corner café, strikingly pretty among rather unattractive old shops and crumbly old houses. It's painted a happy shade of light blue with a thin, tall, illustration-like sign that comes out funny in pictures, and has a cast iron railing at the top, like a crown. It could just as well be called "We're SO happy to see you" so firmly it ticks the welcoming box.
Expectations are high, then, when I finally make it through the door. It's 6PM so it's quiet and I find a place to sit. There's a long table with chairs and bench in front of the window, and in the morning this must be a really lovely place to come to work, but a fellow Mac user is typing away quietly, so I choose one of the other two, smaller tables, which gives me a nice view of the counter. Benny, is working tonight, and you can immediately tell that he owns and loves the place because he never stops cleaning and tidying everything - if you look around, the place is impeccable, actually - he and Marina, I learn, opened this café a year ago, when Ella, their daughter, was born. If you go to their brilliant website, you can actually see a picture of them in front of the café that reminds me of that of my grandparents when they opened their own bar, after they built it, ages ago. It's modernly old fashioned, I really like it.
But i digress; once inside I order a cappuccino, which comes quickly, and is delicious - the froth, in particular, is super dense and creamy. I also order one of their fresh juices, the one that sounds most unfriendly, it's called Green and contains spinach, cucumber, lime, apple and celery. Benny makes it quickly in the juicer, brings it to me and then proceeds to dismantle it calmly, and wash every part carefully before re-assembling. Within minutes, the juicer could be sold as new on ebay, nice touch, Benny.
Green is certainly so; it's also tall and foamy, and looks at me helpfully, oozing anti-cancer claims (claims which I don't necessarily believe, but am brainwashed into noticing). Yes, Green, you look great, but are you going to upset me once you're in my mouth? 'Cos your matey Cappuccino was pre-tttty good, y'know?
I ponder this for a quite a while, and use the time to have a look around. Healthy Stuff is not just a café, why, it also sells lots of healthy stuff! Organic fruit and veg, Ecover's everything, including nappies (not sure why this struck me), and all sorts of nice food and cupboard essentials, all mega healthy. I ask Benny, and he tells me that it's perfectly fine to purchase something that might not be in their menu to have at your table, at no extra charge. So for example, if you wanted matcha, which they sell by the box, you could buy the pot and take it to Benny and he would make you a latte. Or if you wanted an avocado and tofu combo, you could buy the two, get a plate, and eat them. I say this because I've been surprised to find cafés that don't like this, and either don't let you do it, or charge you extra for the pleasure.
Pretty things are all around: there's a canvas bag with an illustration of the café made by Ashley Le Quere as part of the East London Mornings project; the menu is being painted on the wall by Moomintroll and there's a little Moominpappa under a line of bunting on the coffee machine; a crane eats a bowl of the soup of the day and tells you all about it.
By the time I am ready for my Green, it looks like this, so I give it a big stir and start sipping away...
Diane, if you ever come this way that fresh juice is worth a stop.
By Jove, this is good juice! The king of juices, the juice-god of mount Olympus! Thanks Benny, this is amazing, I'm pretty sure this wouldn't work if I tried it at home. Besides, I would be using a masher rather than a juicer and we already know that doesn't work, see the duck pâté i tried to make with masher instead of food processor. Not good.
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