Finding a new niche: Gluten-free dining and street dance with a difference

Taking the opportunity of spending some quality time with my daughter Ava while her rather more attention-commanding brother is away at cub camp, I was inspired by their recent effort to put on a show for us in the evenings these holidays to take Ava to the theatre.

Their “shows”, produced, choreographed and performed by the pair of them, featuring modern dance moves themselves, I believe, inspired by our trip to see Cats at Christmas, have been surprisingly good – their sinewy bodies and perfect height pairing producing something unexpected and innovative, especially as the pair of them have always esued dance classes of any form.

So when this week’s Urban Explorer dropped into my inbox, searching for activities the childminder could do with them over the holidays, the family weekend at Sadlers Wells stood out as something Ava might enjoy – Particularly a show about animals looking for somewhere quiet to call home amid the city sprawl – a tale many of us Londoners can relate to these days. 

Varmints, from the beautifully illustrated the end-of-days children’s book by Helen Ward, currently on a UK tour, is as edgy a production as I could hope the kids to enjoy, wordless, with strong music, street dance-inspired moves, and offbeat costumes: it was an engaging 45 minutes, and the performers’ presentation afterwards, where they taught the audience some moves and answered questions from the floor, was interesting, and about as far away from last week’s Disney experience as it’s possible to go.

Although Ava largely ignored my attempts to talk to her again about a dance class of some kind – now Jonah is doing climbing once a week (she’s too young, before I get leveled accusations of sexism) I want to insist upon a least one high energy activity a week, but so far, she isn’t biting. Which is a shame, since both of them have the aptitude, if not right now, the attitude. And although I must be aware of not trying to live vicariously through them – I would have loved the chance to dance at their age – perhaps in time, they’ll come to their own conclusions with enough inspiration.

We left the Lillian Baylis Theatre at Sadlers Wells near Angel, and of course, having not moved a muscle in an hour, and not long had brunch, everyone was starving, so it was a piece of luck that almost next door, we discovered Niche, a bright airy restaurant on the corner of Rosebery Avenue and St John’s Street, where a table had come free in the watery sunlight, where I could indulge my half-hearted attempts to go gluten free without feeling deprived. The whole restaurant, is, bang on the zeitgeist, gluten-fee, right down to the beer served, and so I could enjoy a soya cappuccino and niche quiche free of guilt without testing my Crohn’s diet or willpower, while Tom and Ava enjoyed burgers, from which I could also hoover up the leftovers.

It was pleasant. The quiche was well-baked, if a little bland – I like my quiche full of interesting bits and pieces, and this was basically just cheese and egg. But the burgers were nice, chips golden, buns were light and fluffy and salads nicely dressed with what tasted like Pizza Express dressing. Tom’s beer was beery and Ava’s choice of chocolate brownie and ice cream was plentiful for three to share.

We wandered back to the car past the uni I last walked out of, barely pregnant with Jonah, past the pub where Tom had once fought for my honour after my bum got pinched, and the street where we met Ava’s godmother, and it felt, with so many memories in between, that we’d come a long way since those times when nothing felt certain and everything felt possible. In that moment, I felt like I’d gone, in that time, exactly where I’d always wanted to go.