Paddington Lunch Box

Paddington Lunch Box

Breddos Tacos @ Market Halls

I made it to Market Halls at last. And I made it to Breddos Tacos…also at last.

I went from one fairly dark room in the office, to another fairly dark room at Market Halls – well, it didn’t have the vibrant sunshine of sitting outside on the Cheese Barge, anyway.

Then again, sunshine seems to have done one.

Also I’ve found the office equivalent of the person in front of you on the plane leaning back…and that is the person in front of you moving their standing desk up, and blocking the light. Granted all the blinds are down anyway…who wants to see the outside world? Well, I do.

Anyway. Tacos. Gloriously, messy tacos. And it was messy.

Breddos Tacos thankfully doesn’t have too many options to choose from – once I’d actually chosen which of the 7 or so places in Market Halls to eat from.

It was 3 tacos for £12.00, I had a mixture of mushroom, chicken and the fish tacos.

The mushroom taco was the messiest, and the one with more of a kick – which I guess was the jalapeño.

The fish was my favourite, in a tempura batter with bits of raw cabbage, onion and tomatoes, the flavour of the habanero mayo was probably why I was such a fan.

Alas the chicken one didn’t really do it for me, again messy though also the chicken seemed quite dry.

Overall I was very happy with Breddos Tacos, maybe a score of 7.70 out of 10. I’ll be surprised if I’m not back for a quesadilla at some point…heck probably everything else off the menu at some point.

July 29, 2025
The Mughal’s

OMG my team wanted to go to lunch with me. So pressure was on to find somewhere that might impress, and I chose The Mughal’s.

Well, a third of my team came anyway.

The Mughal’s is a modest-sized Indian restaurant on the imaginatively-named London Street, opposite Paddington Station.

Alas, for someone who finds it hard to choose, the length of the menu is pretty insane. Starters, Tandoor dishes, chef’s recommendations, chicken delicacies, lamb delicacies, prawn specialities, king prawn delicacies, karahi dishes, balti dishes, biryani dishes and vegetarian dishes.

Oh and rice dishes, and bread dishes…I’ve probably forgotten some.

I started with the fish fry, which was really nice – I appreciated the softness of the breadcrumbs. Apparently it is coated in light Indian spices – too light for me to notice really, but I enjoyed the subtle flavours overall.

Kind of melt in your mouth, though they don’t melt in your mouth – if that makes any more sense than a Circle line timetable.

Aloo aubergine (or is it aubergine aloo) was also pleasing. The potatoes really had the sauce ingested wonderfully, the aubergines were silky in texture and softly roasted.

Again I cannot say I noted any spice, though the flavour was decent – broadly tomato-based with some hints of paprika, cumin etc.

We also had poppadom’s which I always think a waste of time – I cannot say any of the accompaniments were appealing.

Plus it was suggested to me that I needed some bread with my curry (I didn’t but I succumbed to ordering some). The butter naan would have been nice, if it wasn’t pretty burnt to the bottom.

A mixed experience, the waiter was on his own and running around like crazy, only just about keeping on top of everything, taking one person’s order then running back to the dumb waiter to server food, then taking two more of our orders, then running to do something else…chaos for him but it just about working fine for us.

Two dishes, a poppadom, naan bread and service came to £22.44, which isn’t too bad really.

Rating of 7.0 out of 10. I might come back, there’s an argument to having something from each section every time I visit and it isn’t like there is a plethora of Indian restaurants in the area.

I really wish Cawnpore was still open at lunchtime.

July 19, 2025
Gail’s, Paddington Canalside

Ahh those summer days where it might rain, so you carry an umbrella to work…and it doesn’t rain. Annoying. Some people also find Gail’s annoying.

Gail’s seems to have taken the middle-class leftie outrage tag from Pret, so clearly it is a successful and growing business.

I’ve never been, at least not before today. Well, I’ve popped my head in to see if I could belong.

There was loads of selection – the sausage roll looked particularly banging, and various sandwiches did too (no idiotic “sando” words in this blog). Pricing was a little odd – a salmon thing was like half the price of the chicken harissa sandwich I chose.

Including my eating inside tax, it came to £8.80. Notable.

In terms of the actual sandwich, I was really impressed by how well filled it was, it actually felt filling. So often, sandwiches leave me more hungry than I was.

Good quality bread, slight spicy tang to the chicken that you’d expect from harissa, decent tomatoes.

Yeah I’m a fan of Gail’s. Come and take over my neighbourhood please. Yep, Croydon would love a Gail’s. Honest.

Rating of 7.60.

And in case you are wondering whether I still hate commuting, it took me 1 hour and 50 minutes to get back home.

July 10, 2025
The Cheese Barge

So I went to the same place two weeks in a row, The Cheese Barge.

What gives? Well, I try to keep my lunches under £15.00 (at least on average), and you could easily tick into the £20+ mark here at The Cheese Barge as there is far too much temptation.

Also there was just far too much choice, there were far too many dishes that I wanted. A review of The Cheese Barge, in this silly little blog really wouldn’t suffice with just one dish.

Week one – oh glorious sunshine, oh glorious terrace on top of the barge, was about the cheese toastie.

I wanted to love this, but it was more of a like – the golden toast itself was buttery and delectable, though the main flavour came from the honey (chilli honey but cannot say my previously spice-deranged tongue noticed the chilli).

The bacon was good quality but didn’t add much context, and the mozzarella lacked flavour…but DURRGGGH, of course mozzarella isn’t especially flavoursome, but it is delightfully gooey.

For week two, alas it was cloudier but my lunch was one step up from the week before. Like, in an ideal world I’d share 3 dishes between 2 people at lunch, but nobody else in my team seems to want to venture more than 20 metres away from the office at lunch. Unless they go for…a run…urgh.

Anyway, the butternut squash was really creamy, the spätzle is kind of like gnocchi in texture and was as buttery as described on the menu. The pecorino added a cheesy tang, and the bits of crispy sage were a delight.

The Cheese Barge is a gorgeous spot for lunch in summer, chilling on the canal, with some rather ace food too.

Maybe my score is around an 8 out of 10.

Oh and the service is really welcoming. Do go, but leave a table for me on the top please.

Oh oh oh and before I go. What did the cheese say to the mirror?

Helloumi.

June 26, 2025
La Tazza Cafe

Back by zero popular demand, it was time to visit La Tazza Cafe – a very unassuming cafe on Praed Street.

Alas finances meant 6 months of Gregg’s sausage rolls for lunch, along with the odd M&S sandwich as a special treat, plus fuck walking around in the winter weather on a lunch break, when I could be reading something fascinating like the history of tariffs.

La Tazza Cafe is a very standard cafe, seemingly run by a young couple, serving fully functioning food – or at least it looked like.

The difficult with these places is that it is hard to tell what they do best.

Offerings included salads, breakfasts, steak, paninis, pizza, pasta, omelette, jacket potatoes, fish and chips…I went to a restaurant recently that served one single main. Which was easy…and exceptional.

But what to order here? Definitely not a steak, pizza should be from a proper pizza shop (maybe there was a hidden pizza oven…who knows), paninis I can have anywhere around Paddington…

Service was friendly, and there was plenty of seating for lunch – albeit at the later end of the lunch period. I ordered a chicken Caesar salad which took around 10 minutes to arrive.

There was a sizeable bowl of fun to be had, the lettuce was crisp, the chicken plentiful if not especially juicy, the Caeser sauce more notable in terms of mayonnaise and parmesan than anything else. Some cucumber added the crunch – though I always though Caesar salad was supposed to come with croutons?

Oh well. And you know this salad was screaming out for some Sicilian tomatoes, but I was never going to be offered that here. Maybe supermarket tomatoes…I expect they would have added if I had asked.

£11.00 for a Caesar chicken salad and 20 minutes on a plastic seat isn’t too bad value nowadays, and the portion size was generous.

It’s unlikely I’ll go back to La Tazza Cafe unless I’m craving a jacket potato, but likewise I don’t regret going.

6.2 out of 10.

May 1, 2025
Bonata

After a week in the sun it feels like a lifetime ago but I did find a little gem before I went away – Bonata, on the little road that used to end in Pergola.

Apparently a Middle Eastern Mediterranean fusion grab and go concept, if the term fusion doesn’t scare you like it does me… almost as much as the phrase “we need to change our corporate culture”, you rock up and pick a grains or salad base, then add some meat (or not), followed by multiple sides and a sauce.

It’s a shame I couldn’t be arsed to post this the same day as my memory is now stretched, but I had a spinach base, with some harissa lemon chicken thighs – which were succulent and flavoursome.

Followed by butter beans, tomatoes, cucumber and a spicy harissa dressing.

Was a little spicy (more would have been fine), everything was fresh, good quality ingredients…yeah I enjoyed Bonata.

Rating of 8 out of 10.

I do wish I had smuggled a proper knife and fork from the kitchen at work though.

September 25, 2024
Granier

Ahhh another day in a very noisy office, and even had the joy of someone on deodorant detox next to me. Someone take me back to Spain…maybe to Granier…

Well. I made it to Granier bakery which surprisingly is the same chain I saw in Malaga last year.

There’s an impressive range of cakes in the window, and smoothies also on offer. But this is a lunchtime adventure so I was sandwich focused.

After asking the lady behind the counter for her favourite, I then ignored her and went for the chicken with peri peri focaccia sandwich.

The toaster was a little bit more effective as my colleague’s nonexistent deodorant, it came hot if not especially toasted after around 10 minutes under the grill. How so long?

Chicken breast was decent, peri peri was just on half the sandwich.

It was reasonable but maybe I should have gone for a bagel. Like the lady recommended.

Priced at £6.95 I think so not too much lost.

Rating of 6.50 out of 10. I might go back next year. I might not.

So how do you tell a hotdesking colleague you’ve never met before, that deodorant is a thing?

September 5, 2024
Vapiano, Paddington

A brief story about Vapiano, but first…ahhh don’t you love it when you arrive on the platform and your tube leaves…and the next one is in a mysterious amount of time that ends up being nearly 20 minutes. 🤬

Another one of those commutes but at least ordering my lunch at Vapiano was blissfully simple. Order on an app, pay on the app and it turns up 10 minutes later. Super smooth and perfect for lunchtime.

The menu pretty much consists of pasta, pizza and salad – I went for the latter, and there is a lunchtime deal for just £9.95 on selected dishes. 😎

I had the chicken Caesar salad…not an especially high amount of chicken, maybe a quarter of a chicken breast, but tons of kale, of course.

It actually worked well, the cheese, light dressing and the edible croutons made a good match. Would have loved more chicken but I guess that’s why they try to upsell on the app.

Rating of 7.3 out of 10.

I’d go back… colleagues eating pizza and gnocchi, respectively, seemed happy too.

August 28, 2024
Cleopatra

Yet another chicken shawarma, this time at Cleopatra.

In my defence, it’s been a while and I’ve never had an Egyptian chicken shawarma.

Cleopatra is an Egyptian restaurant on Praed Street, selling very affordable food – just £8.50 for this and they didn’t charge a sitting down tax.

Good job I sat down as it wasn’t very elegant to eat, the wrap couldn’t hold it together so I resorted to knife and fork for a wrap. English weirdo, aha.

Chicken was tasty, wrap itself was pretty ordinary and the salad a bit too fruity and tangy for my tastes. Perhaps I should have ordered it with fries instead.

I think it’s worth a 7 out of 10.

I’d go back again but order from the hot mezze section which is where the most interesting dishes seem to be.

What? I’ve not moaned about the office yet? Have I really forgotten that the air conditioning was broken in August?

August 21, 2024
Taste of Lahore

There was only one thing pissing me off more than the commute last week, and that was xenophobic, Islamophobic grunts smashing towns up. So I went to a Pakistani restaurant, Taste of Lahore, for my lunch.

A smart, clean looking restaurant just opposite the M&S on Edgware Road, they have a very extensive menu as everywhere seems to have around here.

So I stuck to the specials and the waiter’s recommendation which was the Nihari, plus I ordered some naan bread to go with it…I was getting a vibe of needing to dip bread.

What arrived was a lamk shank in a huge bowl of gravy…where is this amount of gravy when you go for a Sunday roast in London?

The shank itself on the pink side, not the meatiest ever but commendable. The spicy gravy was the stand out part, hot in terms of temperature with a spicy twang. This was of course more fun with the naan…which was decent but didn’t seem especially fresh or homemade. Maybe it was homemade, I’m not going to pronounce myself a naan expert, but it did seem similar in texture to those from M&S.

A crisp salad came with it too, all fresh.

Not an especially outstanding meal, which cost around £22, but I’d go back to Taste Of Lahore.

7 out of 10.

August 14, 2024