Year of Eating Differently (105): The Breakfast Club, D'Arblay Street

We were meant to be eating at Pierre Victoire today, but because it seems that every Friday my lunchtime companions are rushing to get back for an important meeting, and because one of them had got tanked up at a Valentine's Night extravaganza on Regent Street and stank of alcohol, nobody was brave enough to take a whole hour out. Plus P-V would be packed full of lunchtime punters who probably eat lunch in the same place from day to day and therefore don't have that monkey on their back of desperation to notch up another meal every day.
Because of last night's booze (not me, I was at home reading a book and watching Ashes to Ashes with one eye, unimpressed for the second week and hoping it was going to improve) we also ruled out the pub on Broadwick Street, couldn't get into a brand new hot dog restaurant because it was having an opening party that was invitation only (surely I should have told them who I was and blagged my way in), and thus ended up at the Breakfast Club round the corner.
Unfortunately, service here is damnably slow because it's always packed. One of our number is dying of a hangover, the kind that makes you want to start crying and crawl under the table, the other two are gabbling away about sexual mores and whether you should put out on the third date or not (should you put out on a first date? should you ever not put out on a first date?), and possibly these two things offend the woman behind the counter.
I order a goats cheese, rocket and mushroom wrap, a packet of garlic flavoured crisps and a couple of date and cranberry cookies. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THAT.
Pay close attention, because if you ever end up at the Breakfast Club, listening to the (possibly) ironic soundtrack from Footloose, don't ever order any of those three things. It was like an infernal triptych of awful food - the garlic crisps were revolting, the cheese was like a deposit of something and as for the cookies, the forlorn hope I had that they could cheer me up after the other two was cruelly dashed to the floor when they turned out to taste like sweetened MDF. Not too good.

Year of Eating Differently (62): Pure California, Wardour Street

After a short frustration trying to get my Sony Ericsson K850i fixed (the buttons don't work, which is a software problem, apparently, despite them BEING BUTTONS) went down Wardour Street in search of pizza. I've already done Maletti's and Pizza Express, and although there were some nice-but-pricey places ahead of me, I felt strangely reticent at being sat alone in a restuarant eating a pizza. I used to be fine with that, but perhaps I'd worry too much about the human condition and start crying. So I'll save that for later in the week.
Pure California - well, when I went to California I saw the Greyhound bus station at Los Angeles and it was nothing like this. Nor was it anything like Haight-Ashbury, but since that's just the end of the 60's / Camden that's probably a good thing. Hippies not able to get over the end of their decade are so declasse darling.
Anyway, Pure California offers things with beans, hummus and amusing titles. Yes, very funny. My sides split the time I read a pun on the word hummus. Must. Get. Out. More. Settled for a wrap with beans and avocado in it - a combination I've never encountered before.
It's better than I feared. Annoyingly, you buy what looks like one wrap and then it turns out to be in two sections (similarly, I've always been frustrated by Bounty bars and the fact that you don't get one really big wodge of coconut covered in chocolate) but the combination of what appears to be raw broccoli, quite spicy sauce and almost no identifiable avocado turns out to be pretty good

Year of Eating Differently (13): Wrapid, Berwick Street

I only noticed this one appear since the project started, and it seemed as good a day as any to try it out. Apart from the awful pun of the name, not so bad: lots of different things, in wraps. Bangers & mash through to vegetarian balti. The balti itself is pretty good - very spicy and strong flavour, but the wrap itself leaves a little to be desired. Instead of being something soft and pancake like, it looks like some combination of cardboard and wholemeal something; maybe it had been festering on the grills for too long, but I don't want a wrap which is actually baked hard.

They gave me a loyalty card - I was going to be cruel and ask "what do I want that for? I'm not coming back, you know" but if this quest ends in failure before the 365 days are up, then I think I'd be happy to have something else here.
Cheap, too: 4.05 for the wrap, 90p for a piece of caramel shortcake with 29 different ingredients. Mmm, hydrogenated vegetable oil. Should have gone to Just Felafs for dessert...