The West End / The Cinema Counter

Shaftesbury Avenue against the Tulubaika cinema — rice and egg pasties, bubliks, and chai in a metal holder

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you won’t have plays in the West End but a cigarette-smelling Tulubaika cinema where there’s no popcorn yet there are rice and egg pasties bubliks and black chai with two spoons of sugar instead of twelve-year-old Macallan and vintage Coca-Cola Zero

Shaftesbury Avenue at night

Shaftesbury Avenue at night
Shaftesbury Avenue at night

CC BY-SA 2.0 · RichTea · Wikimedia Commons · licence

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The counter

Pirozhki with rice and egg — boiled egg, boiled rice, and whatever else is going, in yeast dough.

Pirozhki
Pirozhki

CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pannet · Wikimedia Commons · licence

Bubliks, with their smaller and drier relatives the baranka and the sushka. Sold threaded on string.

Bublik, baranka, sushka
Bublik, baranka, sushka

CC0 · Ural-66 · Wikimedia Commons

Black chai with two spoons of sugar, in the metal holder that makes a scalding glass portable.

A glass of tea in a podstakannik
A glass of tea in a podstakannik

CC BY-SA 3.0 · Obrez · Wikimedia Commons · licence