3 hours ago
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What do James McAvoy and my three-year-old son have in common? Very little, you might think, notwithstanding their shared awareness of the book The Dinosaur That Pooped a Planet. Yet their lives overlap in a more tangible way, because they, along with Benedict Cumberbatch, patronise the same cafes on Hampstead Heath. Both actors have signed a petition protesting against the takeover of four family-owned north London cafes by the Australian-inspired chain Daisy Green. It’s a move that has dismayed the local community, leading to protests, and threats of legal action against the landowner, the City of London Corporation, whose new funding model for green spaces prioritises “income generation”.
You’re probably wondering why you should care, either about what Hollywood actors think, or about this notoriously chi-chi part of London. And yet, like them, and like me, you probably have a favourite cafe, one that feels very special. So please indulge me in describing mine: the Parliament Hill cafe, which has been run by the D’Auria family for more than 40 years.
It looks far from remarkable. Unlike the polished, trend-led interiors of the Daisy Green cafes – with their marble bars and high stools (God I hate high stools, an accessibility nightmare that feel specifically designed for rapid customer turnover), their lush, green hanging plants and twee parasols – it isn’t designed to look good on social media. This is a 1960s-style bunker with no-frills decor inside.
My son and I were last there on New Year’s Eve. The time before, he had been very hungry and upset, and the kind woman on the till – in typical child-friendly, Italian fashion – had said: “Next time, just come to the front.” We are all products of our upbringings, however, so I chose to queue. As we waited, I looked around at the scene. The cafe was packed with customers of all ages, races, nationalities and backgrounds. There are often buggies and wheelchair users – it has a ramp. At several tables, local families with young kids tucked into steaming bowls of pasta followed by cannoli. At another, a man on a work break devoured a jacket potato. At yet another, a trio of arty-looking octogenarians enjoyed a bottle of red wine.
As I paid for our Cornish pasty – a firm favourite with my son since babyhood – I told one of the staff how sad I was that they were losing the lease. She was sad, too: they had been told a week before Christmas that they had to be out by the end of January. There aren’t many places in north London where you get such affordable food and such a diverse mix of people. The UK used to be full of cafes such as this: often immigrant-owned, and serving a combination of cuisines. On the surface they seem basic, perhaps even a little scruffy. They are certainly not Instagrammable. Yet what they offer – friendliness, inclusivity – is worth more to the clientele than social media kudos.
No doubt some will say that nostalgia underpins my sentimentality about a place where the coffee is good, but not great, and the menu homely, as opposed to innovative. Yet I know I am not the only one who feels emotionally attached to it, or the other business under threat – the family-run Hoxton Beach that operates in Queen’s Park, Parliament Hill Lido cafe and one in Highgate Wood (new leaseholder TBC). Local newspaper coverage has focused on how people who struggle financially – there are more of them than some assume, as it’s an area of great income disparity – have an affordable, welcoming place to go, and also on the importance of such cafes and how they foster togetherness in a loneliness epidemic.
This isn’t just a story about gentrification and the homogeneity that comes with it, but one of social atomisation. As more and more chains dominate high streets all over the country, truly mixed, inclusive spaces become rarer and rarer. It’s good for mental health to have a conversation with staff that isn’t rushed. I like that they remember me and ask after my son, or give him a free falafel while his food is cooking – that human touch that makes a long, lonely day feel less arduous, which, I suspect, you just don’t get in a busy Gail’s or a Nando’s or a Daisy Green.
I know I am not alone in not wanting my local cafe to turn into what so many others have across the UK and beyond: a list of signifiers, part of a corporate, global language that masquerades as friendly and laid-back but is – in its aesthetic and its pricing – tailored only for a certain demographic, and is indistinguishable from a thousand other similar places. I’m sick of avocado toast. I don’t want to stand under a cherry blossom arch and have my photo taken. I want a cork noticeboard that advertises guitar lessons and babysitters, I want a brew, a pasty, and – most of all – that most human of essentials: a nice chat. The City of London Corporation must urgently rethink, before, as in so many other places, another community loses a piece of its heart in the ruthless pursuit of profit.
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Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
