Bloomberg - free food ahoy!

In an attempt to alliterate even more than usual, tonight before I went to see Butch Bradley I popped into my friend's office on the 27th floor of the Cheuk Kong building.

Bloomberg have a sweet set up - everything's shiny, there's huge tables covered in free food, and fridges full of drinks. (But no booze, whereas I have a litre of gin on my office desk - that either says an unhealthy work environment, or I'm boring because in the last six months I've failed to polish it off.)

Year of Eating Differently (117): 12-Bar Cafe, Denmark Street

Like a step back in time to the 1980s, or indeed some indefinable era before I was fully conscious. This may be to do with the terrible cold air today, or the NME obituaries of Marc Bolan, Sid Vicious¹ and Kurt Cobain that decorate the walls.
However, this morbid atmosphere is alleviated somewhat by the cheerful reggae that keeps plonking away, although that too adds to the sense of this being a cafe before time. The plastic coated menu, the plastic table cloth, they too seem like something very old - not necessarily aware in some awful ironic sense of its retro status, but just a bit old, possibly a little tired.
When my burger (my reggae burger no less, complete with cheese, pineapple and chillis) arrives, it is in an old school bun, with no sesame seeds on top. That is how in the 1980s we would know we had something English, a little tired, the quintessence of the Old Country rather than the brash competence of McDonald'. But I go on too much. The chips and the 'salad' (tomato, one slice, cucumber, one slice, lettuce, one leaf) are somehow moribund, but in keeping with the burger, which is bland and yet with a hidden sting to it. Just as I thought to myself that the chillis were unnoticeable, my mouth began to quiver. But of course, in the 1980s we didn't eat spicy food (apart from chicken tikka masala, one supposes, but never in my childhood experience - I had mashed potato, carrots and peas and that was as far as it went), so in a few moments the burning sensation vanishes again.
So far, this sounds a little derogatory, but this is one of those few places that provides a simple oasis from the world for a moment or two. You could imagine that mobile phones, the internet, the very word (or words) 'dot-com' had yet to materialise into our daily lives. And that, perhaps, is what a meal should provide in the middle of the day.^2
1 Is it just a terrible rock legend, or did Sid's mother really drop his urn as she carried him back home from New York, with the dire consequences that his ashes were sucked up into the air conditioning systems of Heathrow, never to rest? Surely seems too awful an end not to be true...
² In writing this, I may have been unduly influenced by reading Starbucked which raised (for me, for the first time) the concept of the third place, as possibly invented by Ray Oldenburg and then promulgated by Schulz and Starbucks et al, of cafes/bars/etc providing some adjunct to the humdrum experience of sleep-work-home-sleep by being an alternative to exist in. Or maybe I had just been time tunnelling...

Year of Eating Differently (116): Ed's, Old Compton Street

This shining glass temple to 1950s Americana has haunted me for some time, but I've never managed to get beyond the doors; tried last week, but was dissuaded by my American accomplice.
However, made it through at last today. Plonked myself at the bar and the sunburnt chap of indeterminable accent took my order, and ten minutes later I was out again, clutching a brown paper bag holding chips and burger.

Burger was - well, just pure filth. One of the best I've had yet, a slice of half melted Swiss cheese, some unidentifiable sauce (probably mayo) enough lettuce to obviate the guilt at chowing down on so much burger, and the thing so greasy that the paper wrapper had turned transparent. Joyous.
Ten minutes later you're hungry again, but too bad. On the downside, the chips were just - well, not unpalatable, but nothing exciting, and really I wanted fries, long bootlaces of trans fats with a golden gleam, not something that's half the way to being a potato wedge. Not so happy about that.
Then again, by the sounds of it I really should have ordered a milkshake made with a pulverised Kit Kat and half a pint of icecream, and then I would have spent the afternoon burbling like a fool and occasionally lapsing into consciousness. Next time...

Year of Eating Differently (101): Crown and Two Chairmen, Dean Street

So after a weekend in Sweden drinking incredibly strong coffee and eating cream buns, back to London. Went to the pub for something to eat.
The place has tried to rebrand itself as a gastropub when it's in the middle of Soho and therefore beset by hordes of weekend drinkers who probably don't appreciate that kind of thing. However, on a Monday lunchtime it's pretty much empty (there's me, the guitarist from a Hawkwind tribute band, and a woman who appears to be sucking her thumb). I get risotto with asparagus, which arrives after twenty minutes, and is pretty good, although far too small. Luckily I've also got chips, but unfortunately chips + risotto is too rich a blend and now I feel bloated and want to go back to sleep.

Year of Eating Differently (91): The Stockpot, Old Compton Street

So the weather gets colder again, and I'm riddled with ennui and lassitude, to the point where I can hardly stand, let alone stand it. Stagger down to Old Compton Street in search of an omelette and chips.
Unfortunately, when I get to the Stockpot they're as busy as hell and the poor benighted waitress looks as tired as I feel, right down to the huge bags under her eyes which make it appear that she's looking at this week from the wrong end of a very long tunnel. All I've been up to this weekend is riding a bike around Dorking until my arse hurt (Saturday) and then reading The Beach on Sunday, and reminding myself of how rubbish it was. And yet quite compulsive. Must make a note of this before embarking on the Great Folkestone Novel.
Thus, due to a combination of the kitchen being busy and everyone being knackered, it's half an hour before my omelette turns up, during which time I surmise I must have been looking daggers at the waitress, but honestly it's not my fault. When I'm this tired, I don't have much control over my expressions.
Omelette - fine - quite creamy in parts, but very good. Chips also, although one of them was green.

Year of Eating Differently (84): Slug & Lettuce, Wardour Street

Burger too big? Mouth too small? Manners too corroded? Really hard to say what was up with the Slug & Lettuce, but I ended up with burger sauce down the front of my top. By all accounts, I'm a revolting sight to see, scarfing down food as fast as I can in order to get back to the office to maximise shareholder value.
Anyway, the Slug & Lettuce is a nice counterpoint to All Bar One. All Bar One is where "people meet people meet people" - people with a bit of a stutter, perhaps? The Slug and Lettuce just sounds like an unfortunate combination. Both of them are strange places to be for lunch midweek - they're much more natural being full of braying idiots in cheap suits, enjoying a moment of 'freedom' at the end of a hard week. Losers. They'll be enjoying their 'freedom' wandering around Ikea in 16 hours time, or watching Sky Sports on their credit-card-funded plasma screen.
Burger is pretty good, although the bun is very big and square, and thus not suitable for jamming into your mouth in one go. Leads to mess down your front.
Chips look anaemic but taste really good. So it goes to show you shouldn't judge everything on appearances. Like the waitress with blonde hair and skin so pale that from a distance they combine and you think she's bald. Or the wallpaper, that looks like flock but inflated to the nth degree. Hmm. Not bad at all, really.

Year of Eating Differently (61): Red Veg, Dean Street

An unassuming exterior, again concealed by scaffolding, to the point where I walked past it twice before I found it. That must do wonders for their passing trade.
Inside the rather unfinished interior (the decorator must have given up a long time ago, because it's been like this for at least a couple of years) I swiftly ordered my vegetable burger with mushrooms, and then rushed back to the office.

Burger was largely indifferent, not tasting of much at all. Neither did the mushrooms surrounding it, or the mayonnaise. Worst, the chips looks positively anemic - maybe they should get out in the sun more, or increase the iron in their diet. Or possibly I shouldn't attempt to eat things when I've got a cold and my taste is absent.
Anyhow, it wasn't anything much to complain about, but sits rather unpleasantly on my stomach. Next week I think I will attempt to eat healthy things, rather than a monotonous diet of burgers and chips.

Year of Eating Differently (60): Nando's, Frith Street

I've always found Nando's quite an unnerving experience, as far as fast food goes. Part of the problem, but also the point, of fast food, is that the experience is generic - no matter which branch of McDonalds you enter, you should get the same experience. (This is of course something of a fallacy, as borne out by McDonalds' attempts to decorate every 'restaurant' differently, the existence of localised burgers, and so on.)
The thing that has always got me about Nando's, (and it is a genuine feeling of being caught out, rather than something that just rankles a bit with your sense of self) is the inconsistency. In particular, the inconsistent application of hot sauce. Go to the Nando's in Bromley and order something hot, and you can be the big man and wolf it down. Do the same in Islington, and watch at your girlfriend at the time laughs heartlessly as you stagger outside to the next door supermarket in search of milk, only to come back and find she's eaten all your chips. And you're still crying.
Not that I'm bitter, mind you. I wouldn't want to give that impression. But the point is, you're never quite sure what you're going to get and thus Nando's, however accidentally and possibly incompetently, is providing a useful lesson for you about the unreliability and confusion of life.
Furthermore, every other Nando's I've ever been to has got roosters everywhere and some attempt to look a bit Afro-Portuguese. Not the one in Frith Street; here it's pretty much standard West End restaurant decor - a few bits of glass, a few bits of chrome, no stupid 'ethnic' looking furniture. How odd. Anyhow, three of us go to lunch, and while we wait for my vegetarian pitta to arrive, discuss the iniquities of life and how difficult it is as cash-rich, time-poor urban professionals (cart puppies?) to find your life partner, unless you first bumped into one another at play school and spent time staring into each others' eyes ever since. (According to the cosmic ordering school of thought, one writes down a list of every single last thing required of your prospective mate. According to anyone who isn't STINKING MAD CRAZY first dates aren't conducted according to BS5150 guidelines, and with good reason: Blonde hair? Check. Blue eyes? Check. Teeth? Check. Simon and Garfunkel? Check. ... and then all of a sudden ... what do you mean, you've never watched Battlestar Galactica???? Hardly a mature approach to life, is it?)
The pitta arrives. I don't turn red and go into anaphylactic shock. To be honest, I think this means the cook wasn't trying hard enough; I may have only ordered medium, but shouldn't he have had a go at trying to kill me with an overdose of heat? Never mind. Perfectly adequate, and just like (about 50% of) all the other Nando's I've ever eaten. But that's the point.

Year of Eating Differently (59): Maezo, Old Compton Street

Again, it was a cold and miserable day, so we wandered down to Old Compton Street, where I could cheer myself up by looking in the window of Skinny White Boy before going back for a two-hour HR briefing on how to fill in forms. I was expecting another small cafe, but then the blinding bright green frontage of Maezo attracted us, and we wandered in. By the look of it the place had been open a week, although the woman behind the bar assured us it had been there for 6 years.
As the picture above shows, their brand seems to be a bit ... well, possibly overtargetted to their environs. I don't want to be crude, but the mouth of the guy on the left, and the whole singlet thing the guy on the right is into; it's just a bit too ashamedly rough trade for lunchtime. (I could digress here into the unpleasantness of Georgina's in the Covered Market in Oxford [it 'oozes sex' apparently] but we'll leave that treat for another day.)
Anyway, Maezo does felafel, in pitta with salad, but for some strange reason they're called maezo instead. Possibly this is to distinguish them from 'the runner up prize' when you go to a kebab shop and everyone else is eating sliced elephant leg. But you also get chips, which is a nicetie. All good, but the construction is a bit overwrought - first you order, then you get your felafel in a little pitta with a cardboard holder, and then you go back along the counter to pick out your own salad and add that in, at which point you're having to galumph through the lunchtime queue and then double back on yourself to sit down. So not very well thought out by a time-and-motion standard.
It is good felafel though - high on the dirtiness stakes, and unlike Cafe Arlington yesterday it has the right ratio of bread to filth. Good selection of salads, although I wimped out of the beetroot. Chips were possibly a bit much - felt like I was going to burst while listening to the intricacies of career appraisals half an hour later...

Year of Eating Differently (40): Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Frith Street

I'm still feeling sick an hour and a quarter later. GBK is one of those places that has never been formally introduced to the phrase 'less is more'; you get a burger that's stacked a good eight inches high, larded with so much cheese, marinade and just plain fat that by the time you're halfway through it, you're already feeling revolted by life, yourself, the person sat across from you, the waitress who brought it over, the fact that your friend's camembert burger wasn't even warmed through and still has an icy heart from the time it spent in the fridge, cursing over unrequited lovers. Somehow I forced myself through the portabella mushroom monstrosity I'd ordered. My companion, Jenny, sent hers back and asked for it to be cooked properly, which took so long the second time (and resembled something that had been vomitted into a bun when it returned, so saggy and beat-down were the onions that topped it off) that I almost lost my lunch again.
Plus the milkshake is made without ice-cream (a cardinal sin in the eyes of Jenny, but she is American and therefore doesn't understand the complicated and hateful nuances of the relationship between the British and their food) and the chips were only so-so; no mustard, and the chilli sauce they came with looked more like watery salsa. I was relieved to escape, which is the first real low this project has brought me to.

Year of Eating Differently (31): Eagle Diner, Rathbone Place

Med-veg burger, mozzarella, roasted tomatoes, this and that. A little bit cold. Finished it in five bites. Skinny chips were hot and good, mustard mayo wasn't strong enough. Had to resist the urge to join in the conversation on the table next to me about why their company shouldn't change to PHP as a technology platform. Read the start of Pattern Recognition instead.
Bit pricy, considering nobody has bothered to clean the grease off the windows since the place was opened. Otherwise, hit the spot.

Year of Eating Differently (25): Ultimate Burger, New Oxford Street

It's like dying and going to dirty burger heaven. A portobello mushroom, laden with barbecue sauce and dripping with grease. Onion rings that have so much fat coming off them that the bottom of the takeaway bag is slick wet through. The whole thing is a big fat lump of taste; definitely far ahead of the now quite anodyne Hamburger Union. Really what you need after spending the night before out in the woods around Dorking, trying to not die while riding a bike as fast as you can.
On the down side - their roof is leaking, service is slow (20 minutes from order to burger) but then it was 1.30 on a Friday afternoon, when all the suited drones go out for their one big meal of the week, but please people, I'm a man on a mission. Got to get back to draw graphs in Powerpoint and sound competent to an international audience. I DESERVE MY LUNCH FIRST.
Oh, and no repeat of trying to deck the waitress (cf yesterday). Things are looking up.

Year of Eating Differently (21): Smollensky's Burgershack, Charing Cross Road

From the outside it looks a bit like a dirty burger joint, but this is probably because everything on Charing Cross Road looks filthy after about five minutes. Inside it's all dark colours, frosted glass and bare metal - upmarket diner? Dodgy strip club? Who knows?

Anyway, burger is very very good - spicy as, and despite looking like a dog's breakfast (I thought they hadn't cooked the felafel and had just chucked a load of paste into a bun, but that was the hummus on top) it went down a treat. The bun, on the other hand, was pretty awful - flavourless, dry and generally unremarkable.
Chips? Hmmph. Here's my bone of contention. If I'm having a burger and I order 'skinny fries' off the menu, that's what I expect to get. Not great big hoofing fat chip-shop chips, which is what I get, and which doesn't seem quite right. Apart from that they were quite competent, so what was the vibe they were going for? Fat potato obsessed pranksters? Upmarket downmarketeering? Who knows. I'll pop back on the 24th of September next year, and see if they get it right.

Year of Eating Differently (10): Hamburger Union, Dean Street

Just not very good. Bun is dry, vegetable sausage is lacking in flavour, chips are ok. Hamburger Union used to be good about a year to 18 months ago, but it seems to have lost the plot recently. The mushroom burger has got replaced with a disc of vegetarian sausage (a vegetable sausage makes scant sense at the best of times, but a slice of the stuff in a bun? what are you thinking?) and the sauce is lacking in flavour. Bun is a bit dry. Chips are about the only redeeming feature, and even then they're not great (although to be fair, I'm comparing against Cafe Provencal in Herne Hill, and the gastronomic delight of a garlic potato chunk dipped in Colman's mustard.
So anyway, £7.20 for burger and chips. Not especially dirty, so really not dirty enough.