Rio Café and Ricco’s

Unless you live there or have a particular fondness for pound shops or Argos then it’s unlikely you will find yourself on Walthamstow High Street. However if you do feel like a trip out east or you just wake up there then Rio Café and Ricco’s opposite are the places to go. A friend took me there, merely stating that she knew a place I might like but I wasn’t expecting this. Rio Café is an explosion of décor ranging across everything from 50s Americana to European Café to Moroccan hookah lounge with gaudy but comfortable middle eastern furniture and flags ranging from Brazil to Belgium. They have an an extensive outdoor area decorated with equal care and enthusiasm where locals drink espressos and smoke cigarettes looking like characters in an Emir Kustarica film from some far flug corner of Eastern Europe. The food (mezze) is not great but fills the gap.

Run by the same family is the equally impressive Ricco’s directly opposite. Sharing a umm ‘terrace’ (spreads out into the street blocking the road) with Café Rio, both have outdoor plastic tables and umbrellas with no sense of irony to complete the look of a café in an Italian piazza (sort of, if it wasn’t for the less than nice surroundings). Ricco’s is going for grand Parisian café meets colonial coffee merchants, but is in fact much much better than the real thing. They have a splendid gold and wooden bar with antique looking mirrors and barrels of coffee and sacks of tea, serving all kinds of eastern cakes and an extensive range of tea and coffee. It’s all locals here, to the point where they stare at me, although perhaps that’s because I’m taking a million pictures trying to capture how great this place is.