please empty your brain below

Nice piece

You say they're taking the piss - but bottled water and putting lettuce leaves in packets come to mind, and you've already mentioned the cereal killer cafe.
I thought there was something familiar
'bout the shapes of your verses and rhymes
That ABCB pattern
That you use a number of times

Then all at once it came to me
(enough of this waffle and flannel)
For the answer of course
Your poetical source
Is 'The Sexual Life Of The Camel'
Please tell me this isn't true.
It's just a joke isn't it?
Id say with bottled water, yes expensive but what would the alternative be, fizzy and full of sugar.

FYI i finally plucked up the courage to ask for service charge to be removed from my order at 'the diner' (small burger chain in London) it felt bad for a moment, but am i wrong in thinking this should be slapped on willy...nilly, perhaps your thoughts on this DG in an upcoming post
What they won't tell you, whether you buy them in a bag or a fancy Soho restaurant, is...
Beetroot flavoured crisps will turn your urine blood red for a few days, prompting much panic until you check Wikipedia for what causes blood in urine.!
I deliberately haven't linked to the restaurant's website, its Twitter account or the torrent of excitable publicity they've received in the last week.

But if you google "crisp restaurant Soho", you'll discover I haven't made this up.
Spot on once again DG.

My rant, is everything is a fad' or Hype, i.e Byron burgers and upper class burger chains, at the end of the day its a burger and fires and you are paying at least £12-£15 , its just a burger and fries.

Hence when they slap a 2.00 service charge on they can remove it.
The company directors are all bankers-I kid you not.
Hoosier Sands: presumably the kind of bankers whose collective noun is "a wunch".
I have no immediate objection to the existence of overpriced restaurants. They are helping to spread out the money from overrich Londoners (or visitors) to some of the rest of us.

However, this does depend on whether there still remain some ordinary non-piss-taking eating places selling hygienic food at affordable prices. Do bad restaurants drive out good ones?
Tripe crisps you say? I'd give them a go.
It's not the restaurants's that should be humiliated, it's the mugs that use them!
As long as they are using Aussie Samboy or Smiths Crisps. English crisps are rubbish.
Very good DG. I went to get a take away cup of tea from a random cafe on Brick Lane the other day and they want THREE POUNDS. I backed out and went to the Beigel Bake instead.
@ Malcolm - I'm not so sure these places spread money to the rest of us. They spread money to landlords who charge ludicrous rents in "gentrifying" areas and to the bankers who loaned the business the start up funds. I doubt the staff are being paid generously given the entire hospitality business is renowned for low pay, gruelling hours and hard physical work. Whether it takes a lot of effort to serve poncy crisps and dips I know not.

I would strongly argue that places like Soho are being destroyed through speculation, gentrification and "daft" businesses taking money from equally daft people. People seem to think a "crisp" restaurant is somehow creative when it really isn't. The old Soho (and other places in London) had their own vibrancy, culture and "under belly" but it all worked together. Watch Boy George's excellent BBC2 documentary about the 70s (shown last night) to see what I mean. The old Soho also had affordable, family run cafes, restaurants and bars as did the East End. All slowly being priced out. I note even in my own area a long standing Turkish restaurant has closed down and is being replaced by a Brioche Burger restaurant (heaven help us). I suspect it won't be long before the similar family businesses running the nearby Indian and Chinese restaurants are also forced out due to greed and stupidity.
Brilliant piece.
Sad indication of our times.
PC: Good points. I very much expect that the staff are on minimum wage, but that does mean a little bit of the cash splashed is being spread. But the rest is probably disappearing back into the greedy hands it came from, true.
Given some of the comments above, from a cultural point of view, is this really that different from supermarkets putting local bakers, greengrocers, butchers etc. out of business?

At one time we had three examples of each business within a 10 minute walk, several of them kept going after a large supermarket chain opened, in most cases the businesses closed when their owners retired and sold up.

Nowadays the road is regularly visited by delivery vans from various supermarkets, interspersed with vans delivering stuff from Amazon, I doubt if my neighbours would want the clock turned back to the pre-supermarket era, as it would get in the way of their careers and weekend breaks.
@ Agent Z - so very true. It's like criticising artists for producing a pile of **** (in some cases literally). If it invokes discussion and people come to look then they've succeeded, just like these "restaurateurs."
It is frightening that people have the money to waste on the over priced, pseud-like crap you have brilliantly taken the piss out of. Without wishing to reopen the Brexit debate, I really would not be sad if one consequence of Brexit was a reduction in the number of these idiots (customers) with more money than sense and thus businesses like this one might go down the plughole. The minimum wage people who take jobs in this 'flim-flam' sector would be better off doing a proper job, like working in a factory making something useful. And I'm a Tory!
Bravo! Well played.
Also, to W. T. McGonnagal:

The most obvious one I can think of with the same scansion and rhyme scheme is Stanley Holloway's "The Lion and Albert".
Hope to see Gary Linekar in there
This is as much a jibe about the press. A broadside at the media, and their happy lazy attitude in feeding us this crap.
Interested enough to look for the reports about the place in Soho, I stumbled across reports of a crisp sandwich pop-up reastaurant last year. In Belfast. This is clearly more popular and widespread than I thought.
Phone for the crisp fork, Norman
For cook is on her night off
Let's all go and jump on the Night Tube
And head up to Soho and scoff


Sir John Betjeman lives!
Life imitating art? Or dg scooping the MSM yet again...

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/restaurants/a-conveyor-belt-crisp-caf-is-coming-to-soho-a3365436.html
Ah sorry dg, you already mentioned that the crisp cafe is not a figment of your imagination.

I genuinely thought it was satire....

Feel free to delete the publicity link!
A crisp restaurant's opening in Soho
The Standard were last with the news,
Their 'journalist' used all the buzzwords
And yet somehow failed to enthuse.
Your blogpost comes no11 on the list when you search for that!
A crisp restaurant's opening in Soho,
The marketing's mostly bravado,
With Baba Ghanoush,
Katsu at a push,
And dipped Wasabi Avocado.
A crisp restaurant's opening in Soho
The first day's November fourteen,
It's one quid off during the soft launch
But still very pricey cuisine.
A crisp restaurant's opening in Soho
The soft launch alas is delayed,
They've bumped it from Monday to Friday
'Til all preparations are made.
A crisp restaurant's opened in Soho
The counter has small bowls of goo,
Choose veggie ceviche or crème brûlée,
And heritage spud slices too.

A crisp restaurant's opened in Soho,
The first punter beamed with her box,
The Instagram foodies came calling,
But as yet the crowds haven't flocked.
A crisp restaurant's opened in Soho,
Time Out has a gushing review,
The six pack's allegedly TASTY
But I don't think they paid for it, do you?
A year on from opening in Soho,
The restaurant now sells festive treats,
Turkey crisps with Christmas pud flavours,
All whisked to you by Uber Eats.
A crisp restaurant's just closed in Soho,
Old Compton Street couldn't be won.
But you can now buy Hipchips in Sainsbury's,
So the concept (alas) will live on.










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