Jaspistos

Themed eating

Themed eating

In Competition No. 2366 you were invited to describe the opening of a bizarrely themed restaurant in this country. Berlin features its restaurant for anorexics and one for the blind where customers eat in pitch darkness, served by blind waiters; also a café run by an Argentinian where you eat what you’re given, then pay what you think the meal is worth. At Andrew Wilcox’s non-PC restaurant (‘Berkshire’s first’) ‘the party next to us was asked to leave after refusing to light up between courses’; at Josephine Boyle’s The Acrostic Appetite ‘the menu is a crossword and you won’t know what’s on that evening until you’ve solved some clues’; while Basil Ransome-Davies’s Check-In horrifically offers ‘the full airport experience’. The prizewinners get £25 each, and the Cobra Premium beer goes to Frank Upton.

I go to the opening of NHS (Lonely Street, E97), Britain’s first public-private partnership restaurant. Forget Pharmacy and expect the unexpected — from the pay-on-foot car park (‘Hope I’ve got one left!’ joked my partner) to the smiling waitresses who wheeled us to our ‘beds’, chattering in fluent Tagalog. Ward 3 was bright, functional and noisy, if rather dirty, with exuberant floral displays and TV screens over every ‘bed’ for only £1 a minute. We chose the prix fixe menu — cheap, with each ‘prescription’ priced at just £6.40. Service was enthusiastic and knowledgeable, but with no discernible organisation, and our Nigerian Cabernet Sauvignon was perfectly acceptable, taken intravenously. There is, however, only one word for the food: ‘Alas’.
Frank Upton

What distinguishes Slebs from other restaurants is that it serves no meals. Like its patrons — vetted at the door by a ruthless greeter — it is famous simply for being famous.

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