The Parisian Principle

Have you ever wondered what Evil tastes like?

Relax, I've got you covered. It tastes like Tinseltown, Westbourne Grove. Seriously, I've been alive for forty years now, and I've rarely, if ever, had a more nauseating and frankly enraging food experience than tonight.

It being payday, d and I met up in my neck of the woods. We'd had a regular meet-up spot for a while, called Bodeans in Westbourne Grove - it had succeulent pulled pork, ribs, burnt ends, all the best things humans have thought to do to pigs. Then it closed down (retreating to its core location by Tower Bridge). After a while laying fallow, the space was bought by these Tinseltown jokers.

It claims to be an American diner and milkshake bar. Our expectations, frankly, weren't high, because we've been well and truly ass-fucked by places claiming to be American diners in this city before (apologies for the image, but really, that's what it feels like when a place not only lies to you but rapes the culture of a diverse cuisine).

But still, we figured we'd give it a try.
"Oh look honey," I said as we approached the door, "it's a Halal American Diner and Milkshake Bar".
d blinked.
"Only in London," I said. Not that the idea of a Halal American Diner is particularly weird - one thing you should take as read in the States is that if you can slam the words together, somebody will invent it. But stuck in Westbourne Grove, West London, it spoke not of exciting culinary invention, but more of taking the piss.
We walked in all the same.
"Table for two, please," we said.
"Unff," said the waiter, walking us past plenty of empty tables and booths, and gesturing upstairs. We blinked at him.
"Really?" we said. "We have to go upstairs?"
"Errrryes," he said.
"Why?" said d.
"Err..." he said, sighing heavily and going to mutter to his colleague.
"Unff," he snorted, gesturing at a downstairs booth. The menu was full of halal dishes and piri piri, which, in their place are both cool, but on a menu full of burgers and hot dogs, they felt out of place, and the decor was more shabby British 50s caff than American diner. We chose halal dogs, I had beans, d had mash.

When they came, they looked like nothing you'd ever actually aim to make, let alone consume. d's mash looked greyish and gluey, but my girl's a veteran of this kind of thing - she's been in Britain seven years now.
"Scuse me, can we get some butter?" we asked, thinking to stir it in and exchange gluey for glorious, on one of d's fundamental principles - "Butter makes it better, Baby" - but the waiter frowned as if we'd asked for blended fetus. I wouldn't have minded, but if that's what we'd wanted, we could have stirred my 'black forest smoothie' into the thing - it had a colour and consistency you'd expect to find spouting out of someone who counted their life in seconds.
Butter, clearly, was a foreign concept - how much more evidence do you need that this American Diner was frankly full of shit.
"Nnnno," he said.
"You have no butter?"
"Nnno," he said. "It's already in the mash. It comes from our factory," he shrugged, walking off before we could say anything...

The evening went from unbelievable to gloopy when we discovered some garlicky crap at the bottom of our dogs.
"Is mustard!" snarled a waitress when we enquired what it was. Bullshit of course, it was some sort of aioli, but then, when d squirted 'mustard' out of the yellow globe on the table, what splurted out was dark and brown and suspicious.

All of which is by way of illustrating a principle that we've been feeling more and more since coming back from Amroth - The Parisian Principle.

Paris, you might remember, is where we went on our honeymoon. It was perfectly nice and pink and welcoming to us (as a city - the behaviour of individual Parisian hoteliers notwithstanding) from the moment we arrived, until the moment we woke up on the final day, aiming to leave it. Then it turned its teeth on us and mauled us at every step till we got the Hell out of the place.

Not that we're aiming to leave London as such, but we've certainly done our fair share of bitching about it since we came back. And it's like London, too, is baring its teeth and biting our lily white asses, on a 'hate me, I'll hate you back' vibe. So it's as though the city itself is turning on us, as though it feels we no longer belong in its streets and restaurants. Oh sure, it'll take our money, but it's quite happy, too, to step on our toes and spit in our hot dogs - it's like London is treating us now not as its own, but as tourists who have outstayed their welcome. So, big thick single-finger salutes to you, one and all at Tinseltown, and anywhere else that doesn't want to treat us like human beings. I'm happy to consider it a Disappearing Aid, and fuck you too!

Blood, by the way, was 4.8 this morning...