Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Year of Eating Differently (50): Govinda's Vegetarian Restaurant, Soho Street

In Govinda's favour, it's vegetarian. Against that, it's vegetarian, so there's not even anything interesting to read on the menu*, it's staffed almost entirely with trustafarian hippies who are probably having a year out finding themselves and slicing cabbage in between, and the food doesn't taste of anything much at all.
Lasagna. It was functional. I don't think I'm about to be sick, I'm not feeling like I need to eat lunch again, but there was no pizzazz, no excitement, no hope that this might push back a little against the gathering clouds of a miserable universe.

No, I haven't been reading Schopenhauer this morning; I've just had another knock back from one of the teeming army of internet dates that I've downloaded this year. Never mind. I'm sure by tomorrow I'll be full of joie de vivre again. In the meantime, Govinda's offers no solace against heartache. I had to cross the road to Starbucks afterwards to buy a muffin, in the hope that it would lift my spirits. No dice, unfortunately.
Or maybe it's not to do with personal strife. Maybe the one thing that really got my goat about Govinda's was when I ordered lasagna, and the person behind the counter asked me if it was hot enough. How am I meant to know? Should I have stuck my thumb in it? Given it a lick, and then told her it needed a few more minutes under the grill? Given free rein to my clairvoyant abilities? Good grief...
* Yes, I'm fully aware you could have a solely vegetarian restaurant with a decent menu, but this wasn't it, and neither was the place I went to in Oxford where they served up Linda McCartney pies without a trace of irony or self-awareness. That is all.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds dodgy indeed. Only thing I would say as a well-travelled vegetarian is that the Govinda's restaurants are owned and operated by totally different people all over the world and the menus are completely different in each one. Some are more fast-food with a hippie flare, others are really fancy and require reservations and many are somewhere in-between. Make sure you don't judge one on the other (which I'm not suggesting anyone is by the way) as that would be like going to a McDonalds and then presuming that all American restaurants suck.

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