But Nev is already gone, gone as is possible in a 33-seat, seven-table place. Out go teas, coffees, slaps on the back, wisecracks to the regulars. Wisecracks to the first-timers. “Oh, she’s woken up!” he quacks at a deer-in-headlights student. “We thought you was conked out on mushrooms.” With sister Anna, it is a room run on quips and bickers, in an East End Hollywood would write. It is a land of finks and wotchas and ’avin a good ’eart, of cash-only but plenty that’s on the house. There are, they say, “quite a lot of naughty people that still come in”, says Anna. “But they’re good as gold in here.” They, alongside all the not-so-naughty sorts, come for the food, a mix of caff classics (a full English, fried scampi, liver with bacon) and Italian stalwarts (lasagne, penne with pesto, tiramisu). But really, they come for Nev and Anna.
