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	IDon's: the cafe that time forgot in the heart of Pinter country

Don's table & chairs: Kavel Rafferty

With its creaky double-fronted exterior and unremitting drab decor, Don's on Lower Clapton Road E5 seems to be perpetually on its last legs. Orders are written in felt-tip pen on an ancient piece of plastic on the counter which is then wiped clean. Says Don fixture and caff classicist Jonathan Hourigan: "The cafe's run by the eponymous Don and his Italian siblings (all in their 70s and from Lucca in the 1930s). They've been there all their lives. The place sits just around the corner from where Harold Pinter was born. Don's looks as if it was once a stables and has an amazing Georgian double-bay at the rear looking onto a garden. Wooden interior, high ceilings, never full! It's open til 2.00 pm most days. "Don's chirpy whistling (and the accompanying polka music) is a unique selling point along with the lovely caff cat... Places like Don's offer something you can't get in your quotidian Costa Coffee: character! ... Okay,the food isn't up to any high standard but it's run by two tiny little fellas, both about 75 years old, who make great tea to a non-stop soundtrack of 1940s French accordion music. There's something terribly classy about it, even taking into account the nicotine-stained walls, ratty furniture and faintly grubby atmosphere." Pure Pinteresque genius... The East End where Pinter grew up resonates throughout his work: "It brimmed over with milk bars, Italian cafes, Fifty Shilling tailors and barber shops. Prams and busy ramshackle stalls clogged up the main street - street violinists, trumpeters, matchsellers... Many Jews lived in the district, noisy but candid; mostly taxi drivers and pressers, machinists and cutters who steamed all day in their workshop ovens... It was a very very lively, active kind of world; a lot of people who talked a lot. They talked very fast. It was during and after the war, and there was a sense of release. People were just talking very fast. " (Kavel Rafferty has exhibited at the Designers Block, The Duke of York, The Victoria, Clerkenwell House and Mid-Century Modern. Here she celebrates the 'very personal charm that makes every cafe individual in these times of high street chains.') - Don's E5 Photo Special #1 - Don's E5 Photo Special #2 - Don's E5 Photo Special #3 - Don's E5 Photo Special #4 - Don's E5 Photo Special #5 More on Harold Pinter, colossus of the twentieth century here...

Don's cafe interior: counter & kitchen area (Kavel Rafferty)

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