I think it was the bib that did it. I’ve come to terms with my complicity as a food blogger in the rise of popular restaurants. I’m happy to book a month in advance, push through a queue of other desperate Londoners and sidestep past tables of clicking SLRs to add my low level hum to the communal buzz. I don’t mind building on a place’s 57 positive Urbanspoon reviews and providing grassroots UGC marketing for free.
I’m not even adverse to Burger & Lobster’s business model. Their aggressive expansion plans (three branches in year one, sky’s the limit for Q1 of 2013) and low-choice menus aren’t unique to them. It’s not the only restaurant in town that will only let you book if there’s six or more of you and a guaranteed spend in the hundreds; there’s plenty of other places that will politely kick you out of your seat after two hours and more than enough attention-seeking concepts in the capital. (Nearby Bubbledogs for starters: the current king of the publicity stunt menu, the David Blaine of the food world, and a place I won’t visit on principal, unless perhaps they start a line in Scrumpytacos).
But something about wearing a plastic lobster bib, in a frenzied photo shoot of a restaurant at the Instagram motherlode, made me feel a bit of a mug. Of course the babywear makes sense – anyone who can afford lobster for supper will want to protect their shirt and it’s a common fun gimmick at any family crab joint – but it also felt like a kind of uniform, marking us all out as willing zeitgeist addicts with our wallets open and our promotional tweets there for the taking.
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I really wanted the Covent Garden pulled pork stall I just tried to be better than Pitt Cue Co. I wanted to wax lyrical about its fiery beans and meaty succulence, use it as a counterbalance to my anti-Aberdeen Angus food snobbery, have it act as an example of how branding, smart Twitter strategies and hip furniture do not necessarily a great place make. I wanted to rave about its awesomeness and turn the tables on the ‘in the know’ brigade heading to the likes of nearby Meat Market and prove that sometimes tourist destinations can offer the goods – to encourage you to block out the hype and try a bite to eat occasionally that hasn’t been socially endorsed.
Problem is it wasn’t and I couldn’t, so I won’t and you shouldn’t.
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Do you call it dude food or man food? Junk food, or just lunch? I’m talking about the hot dogs and tacos that are clogging the city’s arteries and crammed into every lifestyle supplement at the moment: the burgers and lobsters of Burger & Lobster; Mark Hix’s kamikaze poultry at Tramshed; The Player’s Lucky Chip sliders.
For me it’s guilt food. I don’t mean that in a dieting sense; I’m not thinking about my waistline or balancing the calorie count with the miles I promise myself I’ll run tomorrow. I just mean I usually feel a bit wrong about two thirds of the way into eating it. This kind of salted, saturated food is so tempting and so quick to eat, its pleasure payoff so instant, that you can’t help but overorder, go at it with deranged gusto, and then want it out of your sight – and belly – before you’ve even finished.
This compact cycle used to only apply to the chain restaurants and the early hours – that 2am trip to blend six pints with a Big Mac before bed – but it’s snuck into daylight and more respectable establishments, and was in full force round Rita’s place.
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A month later and Shrimpy’s still feels like a dream. Everything about my visit to the summer’s most hyped restaurant seems a fictional memory or an elaborate trick from some nefarious third party, as if the whole place was a set piece from some 2012 sequel to The Game. In retrospect it just doesn’t seem like it really happened.
It’s just such a surreal place. It’s conjured in old petrol station in that infamous clubbers memory-vacuum behind Kings Cross; cacti sprout by stencil-specked walls and lamps are made of pineapples; sea kelp moisturiser is dispensed in temporary toilets seemingly transported last minute from backstage at V Festival. Our waiter sported a pencil tache, a white lab coat and a French accent and took our orders on an iPad. I thought at one point I might slip into a daze and wake the following morning in the harsh morning sun in an abandoned forecourt wondering what happened. I didn’t though; it’s just a restaurant.
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Yes, it’s not supposed to be the same, and yes it still says “chicks” and “dicks” on the door, but there’s a few reasons why MM isn’t a patch on ML. Namely:
You can wander in to Meat Market
While earnest foodies (myself included) have been huddled in hopeful lines down Welbeck Street since the dawn of time to get into Meat Liquor, and critics like Zoe Williams wait an astonishing 90 minutes to get the downlow rather than tell their editors to stick it, there’s no wait at all down the Market. In fact there’s more “no queue-jumping” signs than there are people.
The burgers aren’t as good
I know it’s against the law to say their burgers aren’t great, and they were great, but they just weren’t burgers. Mine looked like something out of Prometheus, and was more of a burnt onion soup with oversized (and to be fair delicious) chunks of chuck beef patties squelching within. All of their offerings come with two massive patties, and all are even harder to eat than their predecessors.
Of course, half the charm of the Meat chain is the sloppy mess you get yourselves in eating them, but these leave you literally dripping in oil, onion and bits of beef and feeling like a Game Of Thrones mountain savage. Plus they look about as sexy as Chris Huhne.
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There’s a guy who hits up the Bankside Health Club at lunchtimes who tries way too hard. If he’s not throwing himself across the floor on a rowing machine he’s back-peddling on a cross trainer faster than a Tory near a pasty, or gimpily performing thousands of upside down sit ups on a Powerplate all dead-eyed and eye-of-the-tiger visaged. It’s annoying. (NB: I look like I’m giving birth after two reps so I can hardly talk but still.)
The point is, you should never try too hard. Or look like you’re trying too hard. In gyms, or indeed in restaurants. Of course, and mentioning no names, many places do, but it’s a lot better to let the concept speak for itself. Meat Liquor has no manifesto; there’s no ‘philosohy’ to Pitt Cue Co. Overtly quirky or stylised places miss the point, as does anywhere that feels the need to explain itself. Restaurants that want to succeed and entice: just be.
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Look lively, El Camino, Buen Provecho and Adobo, there’s a newbie in town and they just booted the last one of you out of the Taco Top Three. And as for El Camino on Brewer Street, best get the staffs’ P45s ready, because La Bodegra Negra is set to show Soho a really good time.
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Hands up who’s sucked on a second hand bike chain. Or surreptitiously sniffed the chiselled palms of an East End mechanic at the end of the day. No? Well surely you’ve nibbled on the odd burnt match, right?
These might not be normal activities, but they’re sensations unquestionably evoked when you spend an evening in the company of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.
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January sucks. There’s no two ways about it, it sucks big Simon Cowell balls. It’s particularly painful if you’re trying to adhere to a healthy regime, and as I’m three weeks away from my wedding there’s a crushing spartanism to our household’s diet right now. In fact, my fiancée won’t go within three feet of cheese, wine, bread, glucose, carbs, Coke, egg yolks, etc etc, anything fun god I’m boring myself thinking about it.
It doesn’t leave you many dining options. Google ‘healthy restaurants’ and try finding one outside California. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll get the odd half-hearted feature from some eating site on London, citing Saf (God help us) or, bizarrely, Masala Zone. Let’s face it, though, going out to eat and worrying about what the food will do to your waistline is more depressing than the words ‘president Newt Gingrich’. It defeats the purpose.
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Say what, a decent Mexican takeaway? In the middle of London’s arid burrito desert? That isn’t another Tortilla factory full of cheerless automatons churning out bland slop for a fiver-plus (guacamole 50p extra)? You’re joking, right? Fortunately not, and although it’s taken me a year to find it, Holborn now has a place worth checking out.
While Waterloo workers have Buen Provecho, Kings Cross denizens got Eat Street, and the Tottenham Court Road office bods have been enjoying Chipotle for some time, round these parts was always a bit of a Chilango fest. But thanks to Adobo that’s all changed.
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