I’m not usually one to acknowledge let alone commemorate Valentine’s Day however this year I donned a dress, curled my eyelashes, painted my nails and went out to what promised to be a very romantic dinner indeed. The restaurant – much exalted among the epicurean community – was in the trendy, urbane area of Islington. I trotted along in my 6inch heels trying to avoid a crash-course in pavement snogging when my date spotted the restaurant of choice. We crossed the road and made our way inside which looked like an overcrowded wing of the local psych ward. The dim, ill adjusted lighting and thrifty furnishings didn’t help any. Nor did the wilted flora displays scattered haphazardly on chicle colored tablecloths and certainly NOT the disgruntled faces of the other patrons swiftly making their exodus. The maitre d’ – a bovine middle aged tart wrapped up in a mauve housedress with piss-hole eyes, a carmine pout and what looked like an aeruginous peruke – ushered us to an expansive bench table – the kind you’d expect to find in a provincial tavern in the fiduciary age of Asterix. I felt as if I’d suddenly developed akathisia and thus looked to the door. Alas not wanting to cause a scene I took my place adjacent my date and scanned the A4 menu studded with indecipherable new-age argot. I didn’t quite dare touch the complementary h'orderves which looked like ossified elephant droppings. The waiter, a gormless chap of indeterminate derivation with a malevolently bland face and rather too much pomade in his pate, had to be summoned on several occasions. Not enough sense or incentive to attend to his duties without a prompting. When I asked if the chef could hold the garnish on some of the dishes he grumbled like a troglodyte before intoning; ‘Impossible’. The wine or rather the overpriced fusty ferment was followed by an array of small and garish dishes: coagulated quinoa pulp, sweaty Portobello mushrooms resting on a flocculent mess, four scallops sluiced with creosote on a platter of nondescript provender, sliced beetroot straight out of a jar with a nip of parsley and something else, sea bass the tincture and texture of a biker’s road rash and a plate of oleaginous green beans undercooked and flavorless. I selected some of the above gingerly and found they made for an unrewarding plate of pelmanism. It was like chewing on bog paper or crinoline that’s been saturated with molten lard. The waiter was summoned again to go down to the rapidly-sinking ship’s caboose and procure me something edible. He floundered and yammered incognizant gibberish before disappearing to return with someone of higher rank. The debacle continued. My date looked on in profound embarrassment. The seneschal attempted to ingratiate herself by whispering ‘sweet’ platitudes in to my tympanum. I relayed my request again as I had done to the waiter while she informed me that all their dishes are pre-cooked some time before dining commences. I surmised that perhaps that was the reason why the food was tasteless, flaccid and unremarkable in every particular and subsequently sent her away to cook me some beans.
All in all the service was tawdry, the place sterile, the décor frightful, the staff obtuse and inflexible, the food inedible, the evening a parade of slapstick comedy paradoxes. But the biggest disappointment of all was my oversight of the occasion at hand and by extension my date. It seems that even I can be a grand cunt sometimes.
I’m sorry.
