Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic who won’t be around long enough for ‘global boiling’ to be his fucking problem.
I’M taking my mother out for the afternoon. Avoid her like the plague as a rule, all she does is gibber on about which of her friends have died recently. But she’s 87 and not in great health, so I need to keep in her good books. Don’t want her signing over my inheritance to some bloody cat sanctuary.
Anyway, she wants to go for ‘high tea’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. The only ‘high tea’ I’ve ever had was when one of my teenage mates made us a hash brew. I spent the next two hours throwing up, so at least it can’t be as bad as that. Plus, it’s meant to be a ‘great British tradition’, and I’m up for anything remotely patriotic.
We get there and everyone looks at least 90 and ready to drop. There’s an all-pervading stink of granny gas, perfume and stale urine. It’s like sitting in the waiting room for the morgue.
The first disappointment of the high tea is it’s exactly that – just cups of tea to drink, no proper booze on show, apart from gassy foreign Prosecco at nine quid a fucking glass. Sod that for a game of soldiers. My mouth’s dry as a badger’s arse, so I might as well get a brew in. It’s all poncey loose leaf rubbish too, not proper tea in bags from Yorkshire.
They’re all called different things as well, like they’ll taste any different. Darjeeling, Earl Grey, even those weird herbal ones, which look like they’ve stuck a couple of twigs from the garden in a teapot and chucked boiling water over them.
But the biggest bag of bollocks is the sandwiches. There’s only one proper sarnie in the world. Thick white bread, crispy bacon and red sauce. If this shite passes for sandwiches, I’m a bloody transsexual. They’ve cut the crusts off for a start. And the bread is sliced thinner than a fag paper. Tight bastards at these prices.
The fillings are no better. Coronation chicken? A cold curry sandwich, what the buggery is that about? And cucumber, which is basically suspended water in bread. The salmon sounds promising, until I realise it’s the slimy smoked shit, not John West out of a tin with loads of vinegar on. And no cheese and Branston either. Ham it is for me then.
Then there’s cake – so we’re eating fish, meat and cake all in one meal, are we? It’s probably a blessing everyone else here is too doolally to realise. I try some Victoria sponge and it’s passable. I’d have tried the lemon drizzle, but nowadays that just sounds like me going for a piss what with my bloody prostate. Puts me right off.
I’ve stuck it for an hour-and-a-half and that’s my limit, so I tell mother she’s looking tired and needs to get back home for a nap. She protests she’s fine, but I’m the one with the car keys, and she’s hardly going to walk three miles back, so she reluctantly agrees. I’m stood over her holding her coat by now anyway. Always the dutiful son.
Overall impression? Not an experience I’d care to repeat. When I’m in my dotage, I’ll insist on my kids sitting me in the corner of a nice warm pub with a pint of best and a copy of the Daily Mail.
