Café review: Cairo Café

Something I often bang on about often in restaurant reviews is that feeling of being elsewhere, of the power some places have to completely transport you, in mind if not in body. Restaurants as travel agents, taking you somewhere else without having to rack up a huge hotel bill or get to the airport two hours early, or feel that sense of gloom about no longer being able to join the “arrivals from the EU” queue.

Last Saturday evening I had dinner on the sunlit terrace at Buon Appetito, and I felt like I could have been anywhere on the continent but nowhere near Reading. My Aperol spritz shone a luminous orange, soft jazz was playing on the speakers and my pizza was speckled with savoury bombs of gorgonzola left, right and centre. At the end of the meal the manager brought over a couple of amaros for us to try – one from Sicily, rich and sweet, the other from Calabria, medicinal with rosemary and mint. Could I really be a stone’s throw from the Oxford Road? It felt hard to credit.

I had a similar feeling the following day, pretty much from the moment Zoë and I walked through the front door of Cairo Café. It’s where Beijing Noodle House used to be, in a site they’ve bizarrely divided into two not side by side, as usual, but front and back: you walk down a corridor to get to Nepalese restaurant Chillim Kitchen out back, but at the front, with a much smaller bright yellow sign advertising its presence, is Cairo Café.

Inside is a little room that could maybe seat ten people, if they knew each other extremely well. Two small tables for two are on the left, all vibrant tablecloths, and on the right is a high table seating four. A couple more stools are up at the window staring out onto West Street, which offers a characterful viewing experience. It’s tiny, but I loved it, with all the little touches like the black and white photos on the wall and a couple of clocks showing Cairo and Reading time.

Like many places serving lunch in town, the menu – in bright yellow above the counter betrays a certain amount of bet hedging. You can have a conventional panini or baguette, if that’s what you want, and the menu gives you all the mainstream choices – tuna mayo, brie and bacon, chicken tikka and so on. And at the counter you can see all the steel dishes with those fillings, if you want to try the same sort of thing you could easily get somewhere like Pierre’s. But the middle of the menu, marked “Cairo Street Food”, is the reason I went: a range of Egyptian dishes, some of which I’d tried and some I’d never heard of. And the kitchen, just about visible out back, is where all of these are conjured up.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any falafel” said the owner, aproned and smiling. “It’s been a crazy morning.” Undeterred I asked him to explain a few things on the menu I hadn’t heard of before, and discovered that warak enab was what I would recognise as dolmades, stuffed vine leaves. He went on to explain that sakalans was an iconic Egyptian dessert, a sandwich made with halva, cream and honey: I made a mental note not to leave without trying it. 

I placed my order – this is a venue where you pay at the end – and took a seat. The room had a strangely serene calm, and despite knowing that all the noise of the less salubrious end of town was just the other side of the door, I had that feeling of being transported, of not being in Kansas any more. I could see the owner up at the counter plucking fresh mint leaves for our tea and I had that dangerous feeling that comes from time to time, the slowly building hope that I might have discovered a gem. The tea, by the way, was cracking: fresh and fragrant.

Things improved still further when the chicken shawarma wraps arrived on their little tin plates. So many places don’t know how to assemble a wrap so it can be eaten, so instead either all of it falls out of the end or you get a giant indigestible clove hitch of tortilla. You wouldn’t want these people rolling you a joint, put it that way. By contrast Cairo Cafe’s wrap was a stunner, carefully assembled as a square and flattened under a grill – neat, no wasted space, and the crisped exterior almost reminiscent of a pastilla. 

And the chicken inside was terrific: the whole filling was, in fact, with some kind of beautiful alchemy of chicken, cheese, mint and (this might have been my imagination) a hint of something like cinnamon. I ate it slowly, partly because it was hot but mostly because I didn’t want it to end. This cost a ridiculous – and in all honesty, unsustainable – four pounds fifty. You should go and try it, before he puts his prices up. He should put his prices up.

While we ate our wraps, in a sort of wordless euphoria, something lovely happened. A couple of gents came in to the café looking for a late lunch, but clearly in a rush. The owner explained that he was preparing our dishes and that it would take him a while to put some baguettes together. Were they willing to wait? It transpired that they weren’t, and so they scarpered and as the owner came over to take our plates away he was splendidly unapologetic.

“I’m not making food in a hurry. I want to give people something they’ll remember” – a quiet smile at this point, because the two chaps in question looked like they might have struggled to recall what they did the night before – “even if only for a little while.”

I was happy that we’d been prepared to wait, because our remaining choices, from the more resolutely Egyptian section of the menu, all came together and largely kept up a very high standard. Possibly the weakest thing were the waraq enab: I love stuffed vine leaves, but these weren’t quite the best I’ve had, a little too saccharine. I don’t know if they’re made on the premises – they might be, because they felt a little ragged and slightly loosely wrapped – but I’ve had better, both at Bakery House and at Blue Collar, from Fink as part of their superb mezze boxes. A good example of wayward pricing, too: these cost as much as a shawarma wrap. I know which I’d rather have.

But the other two dishes we’d chosen returned to the high standard of those wraps. Moutabal was a bright, zingy thing shot through with parsley, perfect loaded on to pitta (the pitta, again, was a slight weakness: a little hard, and not quite enough of it, although I’m inclined to be more forgiving than it was). It didn’t have the smokiness I associate with some examples – this was a light and happy dish, not a dark and brooding one – but I didn’t like it any the less for that. Dark and brooding gets boring, doesn’t it.

Even better was the sojuk, a marvellous surprise and one of the nicest things I’ve eaten this year. I was expecting something like Bakery House’s maqaneq – sausages cooked and served simply with onion and lemon juice – but what I got instead was wonderful pieces of coarse, caramelised sausages, punchy and brick-red inside, in a thick, spiced gravy (if I didn’t know better, I’d have likened it to a curry). Slow-cooked, soft pieces of green pepper and green chilli were in the mix, giving the potential for every mouthful to be a gorgeous sunburst of heat. 

Again, this was four pounds fifty and again I worry about the owner’s ability to make money charging so little. I ate forkful after forkful in beaming delight: Zoë loaded some on to a piece of pitta, dolloped some moutabal on top and said something to the effect of “this is really fucking good” between mouthfuls. It was, simply put, one of my favourite discoveries of 2022 so far, and I’m not sure I’m capable of going back and not ordering it.

As we reached the end, and sipped what was left of our mint tea, there was a moment of perfect peace. The hubbub of West Street had died away, no customers came in, the owner was out back. The clocks on the wall ticked away the advancing seconds, in Reading and Cairo, and I thought to myself: there’s something slightly magical about this place.

When the owner took these plates away, I asked him a little about Cairo Café. He’d been trading for four months, he said, and things were going well.

“Do you sell more stuff from the Egyptian side of the menu than the conventional dishes? It would be sad if most people who came here didn’t try this.”

Another grin.

“Yes, we do. But I try hard to convince people – we give out little samples, too.” I was reminded again of this man’s spiritual family here in Reading: people like Jo at Kungfu Kitchen, Nandana at Clay’s, Keti at Geo Café and Kamal at his eponymous new restaurant. People who believe in the narrative power of food, of telling stories, of welcoming you into their home with the food they grew up with.

“I’m glad customers don’t just come here for an English breakfast.”

“We don’t do one! We do that stuff in a baguette but we don’t do a full English. We sell an Egyptian breakfast instead” (it comes with falafel and shakshuka, by the way, and it sounds excellent).

“What should I order next time I come here?”

“I know we’ve sold out, but our falafel are really good. And you should try the beef livers.” I made a mental note: the menu says they come ‘all the way from Alexandria’.

The sojuk had a wonderful building heat, so I wanted something cooling and I’d left room for dessert so we ordered a couple more things. Again, the owner apologised that they would take a while but by that point I thought the prospect of another half an hour in Cairo Café was a positive boon, so I wasn’t complaining. First to arrive was a cooling drink which had rather been misplaced in the “Fresh juices” section, a drink made with yoghurt, milk and honey. I absolutely adored this – as a dairy fiend it’s right up my alley at the best of times, but what I loved about it the most was how light and delicate it was. It didn’t have that thick stubbornness a lassi can have, and the sweetness was almost floral, complementing things rather than beating you round the head. To add to the random pricing, this was four pounds but, for me, worth every penny.

Last of all, I had to try the sakalans. This took a while to prepare and I can honestly say I’ve never had anything like it – a warm, almost-crunchy baguette split lengthways and crammed with cream, honey and huge wedges of halva. I’ve loved halva for years – ironically, since my mother brought some back from a holiday in Egypt, and as a huge fan of sesame in all its forms this dish had a huge amount to appeal to me. The idea of sticking it in a sandwich had never occurred to me, but eating this I was delighted that it had occurred to someone. Zoë was a little less convinced by it, I suspect, but she was also either fuller, or more restrained, than me.

Our bill, for all that food and an hour and a half of serene, unmitigated delight, came to forty-five pounds, not including tip. I felt a compulsion to keep telling the owner how much I’d enjoyed everything, but eventually I realised I’d have to button it and stop thanking him. Besides, I have the opportunity to tell all of you instead, so it’s not as if I’m going to get an ulcer from suppressing anything. I went on my way absolutely convinced that I would be back, and positively evangelical about making sure some other people went there too.

My overwhelming feeling when I discover somewhere like Cairo Café is to think: how lucky are we in Reading? How lucky are we that despite the best efforts of the unholy trinity of Messrs Brock, Sykes and Horton-Baker, that cabal of the unimaginative, avaricious and dim-witted, people still come here to open their restaurants and their cafés, to battle away against the misguided focus of our public bodies and the bleak indifference of our local media. How lucky are we that we still get a gem like Cairo Café defying all of that inertia and doing their damnedest to get a foothold in this town?

It reminds me, many years ago, of another café only a few doors down from where Cairo Café is now: Cappuccina Café, a modest little place serving banh mi and pasteis de nata. I visited it, I rather liked it, I wrote a review and within a month it was closed. It remains, even now, one of the Reading closures I’m saddest about – more so, in a funny kind of way, than all the Mya Lacartes and Dolce Vitas out there; everybody misses them, but when I think of Cappuccina Café I sometimes think it’s mourned by me and me alone. I’m determined to do my bit to ensure that Cairo Café doesn’t go the same way. So please, go there and try the food: it has, I think, a little spark of magic. And heaven knows, we all need to keep that alive in Reading, as much as we possibly can.

Cairo Café – 8.3
13 West Street, Reading, RG1 1TT
07862 200055

https://www.instagram.com/cairocafe11/

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Café review: Monty’s Café

At the end of our lunch at Monty’s Café, the owner came over to our table with a little plate for my friend Jerry and me. It had a little macaroon and a baklava on it, a neat touch. So I asked him how long they’d been open, and he said that it was just about two years. And, as so often lately, I thought about what a gruelling two years that must have been for him. I thought that the summer of 2019 would have seemed so full of hope, because the beginning of things is always exciting. And the following winter might have been challenging, as winters often are, but then suddenly, as spring was almost around the corner the bombshell dropped that nothing would be normal again for a very long time. 

I was chatting to another friend recently who said “who opens a hospitality business in the middle of a pandemic?”. Well, yes – and yet some people do, even here in Reading. But I feel particular sympathy for businesses like Monty’s Cafe that open just before a pandemic and have to spend some of their first twelve months fighting especially hard to survive when, even in happier times, getting through the first year proves to be beyond many restaurants and cafés.

All that makes me particularly glad, and more than a little relieved, that I can find plenty of nice things to say about Monty’s Café. It’s a little café deep in the heart of Reading’s studenty area, at the other end of Hatherley Road to the considerably bigger – and busier – Café Yolk. For a long time I didn’t give it much thought because it seemed largely to be for takeaways, with limited space inside and out. But at some point over the last year or so they did some real work on their outside space, put a fetching grey fence around it and a covered canopy overhead, and the transformation was marked.

A while back when we had that insanely hot few weeks I remember strolling down Addington Road past Monty’s Café, seeing its terrace bathed in the sun and it looked like the kind of day café you get in Greece or Turkey, rather than just around the corner from the Royal Berks. And checking their menu added to that slight feeling of elsewhere – a mixture of brunches and Lebanese lunch dishes, where a dish was equally likely to come with cheap sliced white or pita bread. It made sense to differentiate themselves from Yolk, their more famous neighbours, and prices were considerably lower than Yolk’s too.

I turned up on a slightly less sunny afternoon with Jerry to find many of the outside tables taken, which gladdened me, by a mixture of friends lunching and solo diners tapping away on laptops over an espresso. It was a charming outside space, with a clear corrugated roof much like the one at Geo Café’s Orangery, and the furniture was tasteful. They also had an entirely contactless QR code-driven ordering process where you can fire up the website, pick everything you want and pay without ever having to go inside – very handy for people like me who have enjoyed table service in cafés and pubs and are in no hurry for it to end. 

The menu was pretty compact – looking at it, it was as if Early Café and Bakery House had had a child together. The small breakfast selection included falafel and halloumi, the sausages were lamb and the bacon was turkey. On the section marked “Sides”, moutabal, nachos and hash browns sat incongruously side by side. There was chicken shawarma and chicken tikka, and a range of sandwiches which involved taking almost everything Monty’s sold, with the exception of the hash browns, and sticking it in a wrap. If the menu had something of an identity crisis, it was nothing if not affordable. Nothing cost more than six pounds (not even the sole pizza on the menu, which had a section to itself).

We ordered a selection aiming to cover as much of the menu as we could, and the first thing to come out – our drinks – set the scene for what was to come. Lattes were huge things, easily some of the biggest I’ve seen in an independent Reading café, in sunshine-yellow mugs. If they weren’t quite at the quality of the Anonymous coffee sold at the end of Hatherley Road they were still pretty serviceable, and gladly free of that acrid note you often get at middling cafés. Fresh juices were similarly huge, and delicious. Mine sang with mango, while Jerry’s mint lemonade was enthusiastically received on the other side of the table; both felt like decent value at four pounds.

The moutabal was also enjoyable, and very keen value at just over three pounds fifty. Sometimes the smokiness can overpower moutabal but it was kept nicely in check, and there was a bit of a whiff from the judicious use of garlic. The whole thing was crowned with pomegranate seeds and a little pool of olive oil – the only thing that let it down was the standard-issue pita bread, which was a little thin and stiff for proper dipping. There wasn’t enough of it but we asked for a little more, Oliver-style, and it was brought over almost immediately, accompanied by a big smile.

Jerry had chosen the brunch and added some turkey bacon as an extra, possibly for the novelty value. The whole thing was nicely put together with the baked beans in a ramekin, a move which suits the OCD tendencies of some people, myself included. Jerry went on to tell me that he wasn’t much of a fan of baked beans, or hash browns for that matter – which did make me wonder why he’d ordered this dish – but it all got gleefully demolished all the same. Again, there were nice little touches everywhere – something which might have been paprika dusted on the hash browns, chives snipped onto the eggs.

You notice these things, and if the yolks weren’t necessarily super-runny on both of the eggs it didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. I personally would have preferred better toast and butter, but you had to weigh that against the wonder that was Café Monty’s lamb sausages – brick-red, very much like merguez and packing a nice fiery heat. Jerry also let me try the turkey bacon, which was similar enough to real bacon to be a more than adequate substitute. But truly, it was all about the sausages. I could gladly have eaten a whole plate of them – and the menu does give you that option, so bear it in mind if you visit. Merguez for brunch: what’s not to like?

“This will fill me up for the rest of the day!” said Jerry, very happy with his life choices. “Honestly, as you get older you do find you just have less capacity for food.” 

“This is why you’re so much slimmer than me” I replied. Jerry has twenty years on me, and I’m still waiting for anything to affect my capacity for food or my gradually increasing waistline: we’re now reaching the stage where I’m holding out for a tapeworm. “Does that mean you won’t have room for a few pints at the Park House bar later on?”

“I can always find room for that” he beamed.

My falafel and halloumi wrap came beautifully presented, all neat and ready to eat in a little paper sleeve. Again, it was unshowy but quietly delightful, everything in balance. That said, I’d paid extra to add the halloumi, and I think it needed it – the falafel were pleasant enough but I didn’t get the feeling they’d been fried there and then and crammed into the wrap while still hot and crispy, so it needed the halloumi for contrast. But what made it was the crunch of Lebanese pickles, perfect purple strips adding texture and sharpness, the icing on the metaphorical cake. This dish cost me four pounds fifty – good luck getting anything as enjoyable for that price at the other end of Hatherley Road – and was worth every penny.

“This is marvellous” said Jerry, as the sun made a half-hearted attempt to emerge from behind the clouds. “I could see myself coming here with a book and just having a coffee and a read.”

I knew what he meant. There was something about the space, and the uniformly warm and happy welcome we’d got from all three of the staff looking after us, that I rather found gave me the feels. Put it this way: I knew from social media that the café had closed earlier in the week for a short three-day holiday and that this was their first day reopened, but nobody there showed even the slightest sign of having the back to work blues. On the contrary, they seemed overjoyed to have customers, in a way that made me positively warm to the whole shooting match.

Our bill for two came to twenty-nine pounds, not including tip, but it would be very easy to spend an awful lot less. We’d already paid right at the start, so we said a jolly farewell before ambling up the hill in the direction of the Harris Garden, largely so we could pretend to ourselves that we’d in some way earned the pints waiting for us in our not too distant future. “I didn’t bring a bottle of wine with me this week” said Jerry apologetically as we set off, and I did briefly wonder if he’d been replaced with a Jerry impersonator.

Short and sweet this week, then, which is absolutely the right way to sum up somewhere like Monty’s Café. I love a place that doesn’t have tickets on itself, that does things simply and well and somehow, through some sort of alchemy, creates somewhere unobtrusively lovely. No brashness, no showing off, just quiet competence. 

Monty’s Café serves as an excellent reminder, too, that however much you might love food, it’s never all about the food. It’s also about the welcome, and the space, and how a place makes you feel. So yes, I could find establishments in Reading that do better moutabal, or better coffee, or a better breakfast. But the best can be the enemy of the good.  And I don’t think, on the other hand, that I could find somewhere that does all those things, the way Monty’s Café does, in such an agreeable, sleepy little spot. 

It’s somehow more than the sum of its parts, to the point where whatever number I lob at the bottom of this review won’t really capture what I’m trying to say. Hopefully you’ll pay more attention to this paragraph than the rating, and if you’re in the area one lunchtime you’ll go there, see what I saw and leave, as I did, feeling that all was right with the world. Apparently, according to the menu, you can get those sausages in a wrap, with pomegranate molasses and halloumi, and chips on the side. Just imagine.

Monty’s Café – 7.3
41 Addington Road, Reading, RG1 5PZ.
0118 3272526

https://www.emontys.co.uk

La Courbe

N.B. La Courbe appears to have closed in March 2016. I’ve left the review up for posterity.

First things first, La Courbe is not a great restaurant: there are just too many things wrong, even now almost two months after they finally opened. The room is a simple square with one wall of glass which makes dining there akin to being in one of David Blaine’s failed stunts, a spectacle for everyone who passes through King’s Walk to see (about four tables were occupied the night I was there, but if it had just been me I would have felt terribly self-conscious). And the view through that wall of glass if you’re a diner, apart from any gawping passers-by, is the side of a Burger King, hardly the most beautiful vista Reading has to offer.

Then there’s the decor, a peculiarly retro design of chrome, purple and pistachio that made me half expect Don Johnson to walk in with his linen suit sleeves rolled up. There are no soft furnishings, no art, nothing on the walls to distract the eye from the pistachio panelling. Everything is square – the tables (with, bizarrely, the exception of a single round table which is otherwise no different to the others), the chairs and every single plate or dish brought to our table throughout the meal.

The menu is confusing, with nothing to indicate whether the mezze is a really bad deal (£42 per person for some mezze and a main? Really?) or a really good deal (£42 for some mezze and a main for four people! Bargain!). Add to that the fact that the room is chilly – the door left permanently open – and occasionally murky with smoke from the open kitchen (which is presumably why said door is never shut) and you’d be right in thinking that this isn’t the kind of restaurant in which you want to relax and take in the ambience.

Oh, and did I mention how quick it all was? We were seated at around half eight, and with starters, mains and desserts we were out of the door at about quarter to ten. There seemed to be no understanding at all that an evening meal ought to take a reasonable part of the evening, and normally when I eat somewhere that serves you that fast it’s because they’re worried you might change your mind. It’s never a sign of confidence in the food.

So far, so bad, but then something happened that switched this review around altogether: I ate the food.

We started with two dishes from their hot mezze menu. Maqaneq is a little dish of mini sausages “flambéed in butter and lemon”. What the menu doesn’t tell you is that this is a sophisticated version of the English cocktail sausage. These little sausages are juicy and meaty and lightly spiced so that the sweetness of the meat comes out. We ate them in tiny chunks (smiling smugly all the while) to eke them out and wrapped in slivers of pitta to make tiny sandwiches just so we didn’t finish them too quickly. The falafel were less of a surprise but still delicious – each hot little disc was crispy on the outside and fluffy inside and just herby enough to elevate them out of the ordinary.

Courbe4

We waited for our plates to be cleared but then suddenly the waitress was back with our main course, to be eaten off the same plates with the same chunky cutlery as before – another mark against them. We had gone for the mixed grill (just like the typical Brit on foreign shores). This was described quite plainly as “charcoal grilled selection of lamb, Kafta and chicken with Hommos and Tabouleh” (I swear I find another way to spell houmous every month, maybe it’s like the Eskimos having all those words for snow). It looked terrific, and it tasted even better. The chicken, marinated with ginger and garlic, was just perfect – tender on the inside yet caramelised on the outside, sticky and delicious. The lamb was also spot on, just the tiniest bit of pink in the middle of each piece, and had a hint of cinnamon. The lamb kofte (my spelling) was the least interesting of the meats but third place was no disgrace in this selection. Rather than being the very spicy kofte that I’m more familiar with, this had a subtle, almost buttery flavour and was soft and delicate.

Courbe2

The mixed grill came with two accompaniments. In one corner of the dish was some good (if unexciting) houmous with a pool of olive oil and some finely chopped tomatoes in the middle. In the other corner, just to offset all that meat, was an extremely good tabbouleh, singing with the fresh green flavours of parsley and mint, with plenty of lemon juice. It might even have been my favourite thing I ate that evening, and I don’t say that lightly. All in all, the mixed grill was a thing of wonder, square plates or no.

We didn’t feel quite up to a full bottle of red (which is a pity, because there’s a good selection of Lebanese reds including Chateau Musar, which I’ve loved in the past) so we plumped for a glass each of the Domaine des Tourelles, a Lebanese red which was full and fruity and a good foil to the spicy meats.

I didn’t really fancy dessert after that mammoth undertaking but there’s a sense of duty about doing ER reviews so we gamely went for it. The baklava, rather than being one big baklava oozing with honey, was a selection of the familiar pastries in different shapes with either pistachio or pine nut fillings. I really liked them – they were much less cloying than they can often be, subtler and more interesting. The mouhallabieh was not as successful. The waitress described it as a chilled rice pudding with rosewater and pistachio – which captures it quite well, but neglects to mention that it had either been chilled for some time or it had been set with gelatine which meant that the nice gritty rice texture was replaced by something far less enjoyable. Between us we managed about half of it but after a while a dish that gloopy and big became a bit of a burden so we left it unfinished.

Courbe3

Service throughout was warm and friendly, enthusiastic about the food and more than willing to make recommendations. Even so, the whole set-up seemed a little, well, amateurish. The speed with which the food came was the most obvious problem, but there were others too: we weren’t offered water at any stage (despite there being water glasses on seemingly every table but ours) and the till is down the corridor in the adjoining wine bar, so you have a bit of a wait once you’ve asked for the bill.

Ours, when it eventually arrived, was £57 for two people eating three courses and having a glass of wine each. I felt like this was a pretty good deal given how good the food was (the mixed grill for two is about twenty-four pounds, for instance). Even while I was eating there I was already planning a return visit with friends, albeit probably at lunchtime when a quick meal feels like less of a problem.

Rating this restaurant has been nigh-on impossible, to the extent where I’ve wondered why I give ratings at all. How can I possibly give a single mark out of ten which reflects somewhere that serves such great food in such a problematic venue? I’m not sure my eventual score truly sums up the mixed message that is La Courbe; I wanted to give them higher but I just can’t until they get their crinkles ironed out. But I want them to do well enough to get the time to do that, because I can forgive a lot of things when the food is this good. Maybe this isn’t the venue for a romantic, lingering meal for two or a big night out, but I can see how one day it could be. And if that means I have to eat a few platefuls of their spiced chicken – in the cold, on those square plates, with that appalling view – to give them the chance to work on getting it right, then it’s a cross I’ll just have to bear.

La Courbe – 7.3
9-11 Kings Walk, RG1 2HG
0118 9581585

www.lacourbe.co.uk