Restaurants, Cafes, Coffee Bars

Ah, I thought you were saying I rang the number

OK, I have got my head round it now. Looking at the position of the doors and windows 15 and 17 was the right hand window with the blue blinds and the shop on the right saying student accommodation which were Jane's shop on Neils picture. The Rainbow cafe would have been the central blue window, now joined with number 11, the left hand blue window. Central Insurance brokers actually advertise as 13. 19 to 33, a company called Homecare advertise as 19/33 doing loft insulation but there are flats there now.

Based on the close position of the windows upstairs, I think that Mary's was to the right of the fire alarm box and the café to the left. I think all of Neil's photo became Central Insurance Brokers. But theoretically the numbering today may have no relevance to the past.

I think we agree Helen, perhaps I have described it badly. We do agree on the main point, it is the spot of Neil's picture !

Thanks Ladies/all!

The Captains Table has been mentioned previously. It was owned by John Reeves who lived on the corner of Baginton Rd and the Kempas Highway, he was friends with The Batchelors (remember them?). He opened the Castaways Club in Digbeth. When he closed up he moved with his partner to the Canaries doing I believe catamaran trips, but that was many many moons ago in the 60/70's.

Not seen it mentioned, but does anybody remember The Lunch Box upstairs above the shops at the Forum?

Hello lolipop, Oh yes, on top of Hogarths. If you ate the huge mixed grill, you got a free pudding. How's that for starters?

Slightly off topic but I seem to recall a rather nasty incident back in the 60s when a vehicle whilst negotiating the roundabout at the junction of Kenpas Highway and Baginton Road lost control and crashed into a property. Yes I do remember The Bachelors, they were hugely popular to a particular audience at that time but looking back at archive footage it's a little cringeworthy. Declan Cluskley appeared on a Channel 4 episode of Come Dine With Me back in 2017 and came across as someone I personally would get up and leave the dining table never to return and sit with him again.

My future wife and I used to go there in our courting days around 68/69, it was quite romantic, there was a man who used to play the violin. The food was always great.

The Lunch Box did get a mention earlier in this topic, but only briefly - and it was 12 to 13 years ago! I only recall being taken in there once, which was with family to celebrate my Nanna & Granddad's ruby wedding anniversary, which dates it to 1979 when I was 14. My main recollection of the event was actually my dad taking photos using an old-fashioned flash-gun, the reflector of which unfurled like silver windmill sails, and required a flash-bulb to be plugged in for every shot - and dad blowing on the hot, used bulb before removing it wrapped in his handkerchief, ready to insert a fresh one. How technology has changed, eh!

Percy Gatland.

We used to eat out at the Lunch Box to celebrate special occasions on visiting my parents ~ 1980's. I cannot remember eating out in Coventry at any other times except at the Indian restaurant that was upstairs in the precinct with some Caludon alumni in the 1970's, and once at the Chinese restaurant in Ironmonger Row back in the late 1950's. I have forgotten to mention cafeteria meals in Woolworths etc.