The dining room, deep in the hotel, is a broad space of high ceilings and coving, with thick carpets to muffle the screams. It is decorated in various shades of taupe, biscuit and fuck you. There’s a little gilt here and there, to remind us that this is a room designed for people for whom guilt is unfamiliar. It shouts money much as football fans shout at the ref. There’s a stool for the lady’s handbag. Well, of course there is.
My Mediterranean squid salad involved strips of white rubber of the kind I occasionally find myself staring at in mystification in the hardware shop. “Can I try some?” my friend asked. I put my hand to his forehead, but he was cool as a cucumber, so I passed over a strip. “Yup, just wanted to be sure. Like eating a well lubricated Durex.”
But worst of all is “drunken chicken parmesan”: the bludgeoned, breaded breast, spurted with mozzarella and sugary tomato sauce (it has vodka in it, apparently, but you’d never know), covers a whole vast round plate, a mutant pizza, a bulimic Parmo. I genuinely have no idea how they’ve done this, how they’ve fashioned this nightmarish chicken centipede.
“It’s vicarious displeasure. Everybody has had a terrible experience in a restaurant and when I cut up rough it’s as if I’m taking revenge on their behalf for every lousy dinner they’ve ever had.” – Jay Rayner
