Started the evening at the Skylon Bar overlooking the South Bank for cocktails.
£15 a pop, but fantastic venue and views over the Thames
Then to The Shed, which is the new, temporary theatre built in front of the National Theatre.
Made of rather striking planks of red wood.
Unfortunately, our seats, although front row upstairs, were right on the side, and more than half the stage was obscured by having to look through racks of stage lighting.
This in fact turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the play had a disappointingly worthy theme (third world exploitation through foreign aid) and was rather like an AS-Level student's project. You know, where Angry Young Men all stand about on stage and shout FUCK!! at the top of their voices, before covering everything in fake blood
"Play" finally finished at 9.30 to thunderous applause
We walk along the embankment looking for a prospect for supper, and it’s all, ALL bloody chains. Prezzo, Ask, Yo sushi, Feng Sushi (oh ha ha), Giraffe, Livebait, Starbucks, Café Nero, Costa, Chez Gerard, Black & Blue, Pret, Café Rouge, Browns, blah di blah di blah. They are all full, crazy busy, noisy, brash, expensive, derivative and basically pretty bloody awful. I’ve eaten in a few, and I know.
The whole country is being taken over by chains, whose food tastes like it has been manufactured in a central processing plant in Middlesbrough and pumped through underground ducting to emerge as uniform slurry in various local distribution outlets, otherwise known as a “Restaurant"
They are all, in everything but name, like MacDonalds, and I believe some are actually OWNED by MacDonalds
So we are walking along The Cut, where the New Vic is, and come across this place
and we’re instantly back in the fifties. No, not a fifties lookalike, but The Fifties. No retrospective nostalgia. This is the real thing. Original décor. The place looks like it has been untouched for 60 years.
About 2/3 full, no blaring music, no cutting edge lighting solutions, just people having an Italian meal. The waiters are not twenty something Lithuanians, but, shock horror, ITALIAN, and to a man, they are all old, bald, slightly sweaty geezers, with their beerguts hanging out of their black waistcoats.
“Table for 2?” we say to the nearest sweaty geezer
He shrugs and points to a table. A shrug! I would rather have a genuine shrug than a false smile any day of the week. This chap has never been on a Customer Relations Training course for a restaurant chain and believe me, is much the better for it.
The place mats are oblong purple plastic, vintage 1955. The menus come in purple plastic covers.
Classic. The food is just plain Italian food. No provenance. No long descriptions of how “our world famous meatballs were prepared by rolling them on the inner thighs of Umbrian Nuns.” Just Prawn Cocktail. Saltimbocca. Veal Parmigianino. That’s all you want isn’t it? Just tell me what the hell you’ve got.
Provenance.
Ye Gods
I was in a poncy Spanish Restaurant earlier in the year, and they had a leaflet to accompany the menu that had SEVEN PAGES dedicated to the provenance of salt.
Marketing. Ye Gods again. Marketing is the act of raising expectations to such a level that you are always disappointed.
Anyway, I look at the starters. Egg mayonnaise. Egg Mayonnaise! I hadn’t seen egg mayonnaise on a menu for what…three hundred years?
So I go for that and the missus goes for prawn cocktail. And we get just that. A hardboiled egg covered in mayonnaise, with a very nice, fresh green salad, and prawns covered in pink Marie Rose sauce. Lovely.
Then I have what is described on the menu as “veal escalope with a mushroom, cream and sherry sauce”. And I get a nicely cooked escalope of veal, covered with a sauce made of mushrooms, cream and sherry. Exactly what it said. Completely unpretentious. Clearly freshly cooked and absolutely delicious. How hard is that to do? Why do so many restaurants nowadays have to embellish everything?
Everything has to be designed to within an inch of its life: the lighting, the décor, the bar, the seats, the menu, the bloody table mats. The customer is treated like a three year old with the attention span of a goldfish. Unless we are entertained and distracted for every second of the time we are in their chain, we will get bored and go next door.
It is as if they are suffering from a collective inferiority complex.
Anyway, we had coffee, which was extremely good despite not being covered in whipped cream, hundreds and thousands, cocoa powder sprinkled in the shape of the Trevi Fountain, caramel sauce, marshmallows and a fried egg,
paid the very reasonable bill, and left, saying goodbye to the staff as we exited.
No one took a blind bit of notice
Classic
We shall return
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