We were on home turf with this stop on the Great Bear adventure, as Belsize Park is the nearest tube stop to Mr Rathbone’s pad.  His place is my second home as we alternate between his gaff and mine at the weekends.  In Simon Patterson’s great artwork, Belsize Park station is reimagined as Henry Fonda station.

Therefore, a Henry Fonda Meatball was duly presented to the Roundel

and scoffed on the platform.

These were delicious, but let’s face it, all meatballs are delicious, aren’t they?  There is just something about the shape.  Meatloaf in ball shape.  A burger in a ball shape.  I love meatballs.

“Jag älskar köttbullar” Jag = I Älskar = Love Köttbullar = Meatballs.

The recipe is in the Vincent Price Cookbook – I proposed Vincent’s Scandinavian Fruit Soup as a dessert

for a nice din-dins to accompany The Long Night (1947)

What makes these SWEDISH?  It’s the milk sauce, I guess.

Familiar from the Greta Garbo Swedish Meatballs recipe.

I really love this milky sauce with meatballs, but I love a tomato sauce with them too, and that Ottolenghi sauce with broad beans in it and…  Let’s face it, I love meatballs with any old sauce.  But Henry’s recipe is GOOD.  Not sure how it compares to the legendary IKEA meatballs, as it is a long time since I have scarfed some of those, but if you’ve never had a milky sauce with your meatballs, why not give it a whirl?

No photos of Mr R on the platform sampling a meatball, nor of me posing around the station entrance (I usually have both of these), but I have a feeling we didn’t get OUT of Belsize Park station after mucking around on the platform, we proceeded directly to the pub.  The King William in Hampstead, where I posed with Dusty…

and took a photo of my favourite pub loo picture.

Mr Rathbone’s Station Factoids

Opened in June 1907, the station’s functional but handsome exterior (the ox-blood tiles and arched windows are typical of Leslie Green’s station designs of the period), has changed little in the last century although the lifts and ticket barriers inside have undergone a complete overhaul in recent times.
In common with six other Northern Line stations, Belsize Park also hides a deep level air-raid shelter completed in 1942 and subsequently used for archival storage. A hundred yards or so left of the station itself, the junction of Haverstock Hill and Downside Crescent is dominated by a distinctive white circular building.

This served as the entrance to a shaft leading down to two parallel tunnels with a combined capacity of up to 8000 people, although only one was ever used as an actual shelter.
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Considering the strange, almost space age appearance of this and the other Northern Line shelters, it will probably come as no surprise that some of them have been utilised by classic sci-fi TV series’ over the years; Doctor Who, Blake’s 7 and Survivors among them.
And when my wife arranged an exclusive private tour of the building for me in our early dating days, we were amazed to stumble upon this incredible device, at that time seemingly in full working order. It’s a Mercury Arc Rectifier Substation – but of course you all knew that already!
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ONLY TWO MORE STATIONS TO GO ON OUR GREAT BEAR ADVENTURE FOLKS! and both of them Fondas!

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