Food I've been trying desperately not to link to 'The Guardian'. Sometimes it feels a bit easy. Everything which appears on the G2 page is always inspiring. But I can't help but offer a piece from Stuart Jeffries. I stopped talking to Jeffries some time in the mid-nineties after her wrote a stinging attack on the Alanis Morissette track 'Ironic'. He went into great detail about how unironic the piece actually is (the mearest thought -- I mean how dare he). But after a couple of years I began to read his stuff again and much of the time he's very entertaining. His latest piece is a restaurant review from hell:
"The hunched, poignantly sad-eyed waitress approaches like an Eastern European homage to Julie Walters' Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques. A cocktail perhaps? The laminated cocktail menu comes with handy illustrations. The picture of the Blue Hawaiian makes me remember that I should get some anti-freeze now the nights are drawing in. Perhaps not: something jaunty with an umbrella would only deepen our growing feelings of existential gloom."
I'm sure the review wouldn't be as stinging if the owner was planning on keeping the place open. I've never eaten there, but my Mother says that her and my Father went when they were a young married couple (in the time when as my Dad says "they were fabulous") and Mum ordered some rasberries -- which turned out to be so insipid they put my her off the things for the rest of her life. Now that is bad ...

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