Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 December 2010 09:51:52
This Saturday TOH and I "enjoyed" a unique dining experience with the GCN crowd.
To put this in context A is wonderful, in someways a modern saint. She's a straight woman who gives up much of her time to support LGBT Christians. When arranging gatherings she does wonderfully, using recommendations to choose the majority of places we go to eat. She gets us sorted and pursuades these eateries to take a huge group booking without a deposit. Occassionally, she hasn't managed to get a recommendation but finds us great places. On Saturday, though it all ended a little differently.
At the time of our booking a group of us entered the establishment. We were immeadiately somewhat overpowered by the smell of bleach mixed with joss sticks. The insense obvioulsy trying to calm down the smell of bleach but ending up smelling like an Anglo-Catholic church with an over zealous cleaner. For a couple of minutes we were on our own, waiting for staff to appear.
Then when they did emerge we took our seats and waited, noticing as we did the spider plant leaves, which were a sad dead brown colour, emerging from a strategically placed bit of tinsel.
When the waitress arrived she seemed somewhat suprised that we wanted a drinks menu before giving our order. It did emerge though, one laminated menu between the 7 of us on our table at that point - the others apparently managing without.
We gave our orders, being told as we did by our waitress in this Italian that she was French and didn't speak too much English. After being told they were out of Chardonnay two bottles of "house" wine arrived.
The white Echo Falls we commented wasn't quite the right colour and we observed the top had been opened before coming to the table. Still we drunk it, nobody was up for complaining that the alcohol content had been lowered slightly and it was the wedding in Cana in reverse. The red too was different, it came in a bottle labelled "Yellow Fever" and the glass was too dark to see if the wine had been tampered with. When poured into the wine glasses, which were either plastic or glass depending on the luck of the draw, it was clear this too was weaker than it should be. Again nobody was up for a fuss though, by this point we were actually almost enjoying the Fawlty Towersness of it all.
Then a Wagner lookie likie entered the set. He was obviously the manager. He was clutching a pile of laminated menus which were obviously freshly produced. There was an effort to make them festive with a pretty boarder. Not all quite matched though, my neighbours offering Ceasar Bread rather than Ceasar Salad.
The orders were taken and Wagner approached our table, dodgy pony tale and all. He checked all was good. Somebody mentioned the red, (which by now had been passed around and identified by all as being weaker than the stuff Baptists and Methodists use for communion). Wagner mumbled about us being half way through the bottle but went and got another bottle of liquid, this one more suitable for Anglican and Catholic congregations. I did notice though that he had to have two goes at selecting the bottle to bring over to us.
The food when it arrived was what we were, by this point, expecting. It was underwhelming and had all the hallmarks of Sainsburys basic.
We paid at the end in a strange way. The waitress, whose English seemed to have suprisingly improved since Wagner arrived to take the heat, totalled us all up seperately and seemed really suprised when TOH and I wanted to pay together.
And so we left this box with shakey tables and strange marks on one wall. The pound shop style napkins would be left for some other unsuspecting person.
Walking between there and the LGCM carol service we mused on what the Italian really was. We weren't sure but it sure as heck was not your "normal" restaraunt. Later a friend posted a link to this article on FB, which seems enlightening and names the establishment for those wishing to avoid it. The saint apologised not to have picked it up earlier but it was not her fault. A does a wonderful job and whilst we do not salute the restraunt we do salute her.