Delancey and Co,
Goodge Street, London

According to wikipedia ‘digestion is the breakdown of food into smaller components that can be more easily absorbed and assimilated by the body’. Whilst I’m aware that that is the textbook definition of the word when I refer to ‘digesting’ something and in the context of food I’m often talking about a mental process that could take anything from a few hours to a full day. When I’ve eaten something and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it my mental digestive the process can be likened to kissing some bird that you really fancy. Thinking about it after, what was good about it, was there anything I could have done to improve it, was there anything they could have done to make it better; pretty much everything up to the point of thinking how can I sleep with it where I’m luckily still sane enough to draw the line. It’s an experience like this that I was hoping to have during my lunch break today like every other day.

After a recommendation from a member of staff I decided to attempt Delancy and Co on Goodge Street just off Oxford Circus. Being the type of person who does not make decisions purely off recommendations I did a little reading up and thought I might as well give it a shot. This place has New York city written all over it, serving up bagels and sandwiches in true big apple style with salt beef and smoked salmon being the main focus. It’s laid out inside like a classic NY diner and runs like a Barburrito/Subway type joint where you pick your bread then your filling then your blah blah blah you know the rest.  

The first thing I thought when gazing upon the menu was ‘BIT EXPENSIVE INIT’, pretty sure I said it out loud as well which spurred on my new intern pal to swiftly exist the door and make the smart decision to grab a sandwich from Tesco. Now don’t get me wrong, I know this is a foodie place and that we’re one street away from Oxford Circus; it’s not like I was expecting pound bakery prices and I know you’ve gotta make that rent money boy. However I thought the best part of £9.00 for a lone bagel at the smallest size was pretty steep. At this point it was too late to back down, I’d already led my intern buddy in a series of random directions to find this place, so there was no chance I was going to walk out of Delancey and Co without anything. On reflection I probably should have walked out with a can of Brooklyn lager (they serve beer) which I contemplated but then thought taking that back to the office and downing it in the lobby might not make a great impression on my fellow staff members.

Getting down to the food which it apparently always takes me too long to do. It was good but it wasn’t ten quid good. The salt beef was nice and stacked high and the pickles were tasty. I opted for standard english mustard and also jalapeño mustard which turned out to be a little overpowering. I was also allegedly entitled to some sort of cream cheese which was unfortunately never offered to me and which I was too dumb to ask for. There’s ad ons you can get for extra money such as pickled red cabbage, sliced red pinion and mashed avocado but didn’t fancy pushing my bagel into the financial shark tank of £10 + and get bitten. One thing that really annoyed me was the bagel real estate. I understand I got the smallest version, but it was just a normal bagel with way too much on it. I was planning on enjoying this whilst trying to look like a pretty smooth guy but when a pickle hurled it’s self onto the table before I even lifted it up that plan went swiftly downhill. I thought this place was supposed to be creating an alternative to the ‘dirty food’ phenomenon that’s sweeping the nation but there was nothing particularly clean about this.

The food here is nice but referring back to my sad little analogy from before, I’d pretty much forgotten about about it 30 minutes after eating it. I feel like if the price was dropped by a couple of quid then i’d feel better about it but then again, it wouldn’t be my go to lunch spot if I was making the club go up on a Tuesday. The moral of the story is I should have taken a left instead of a right and gone to Honest burger instead.