I have a tendency to 'fate' myself, making sweeping, grandiose comments, like "we've never had a bad eating out experience here" only to make a liar of myself mere moments later.
We met up with some people from our not too distant past tonight for a few drinks and a meal. They were staying near Union Square. I'm not really familiar with places to eat or drink around there, so I turned to Yelp. We have no real idea of where to go out, other than when we are given personal recommendations; and living on a budget, we don't want to 'waste' nights out, so I research places as best I can. I have been using Yelp, a peer-review site of all sorts of things in their area, which is useful to a point. I notice that Yelp has now launched in the UK so it will be interesting to see how useful / successful it becomes there. Reviews are usually hilarious as some people are bothered by the strangest things so it is hard to gauge whether you will be of a similar opinion to those who like it, or those who do not. Since we have been here I have built up a list of possible places to eat and drink, yes, I'm a geek. So far, we have been very lucky.
Tonight, not so. The bar we went to although having received great reviews was just OK, if I am being generous, which if you read on, you will see that I am not. One member of the bar staff was pretentious and rude and managed to make a real meal of an order for orange juice. We were told, 'I'm afraid we only have freshly squeezed blood orange'. Right. How awful for you. A second order of orange came with mistakenly added vodka and a weak apology. It must have been difficult for him. He needed all his concentration to look so happy.
The same churlish waiter tried to take away my drink too early (surely the most heinous of crimes), and took away Mike's mangled straws with a look of utter contempt as though they were messing up the bar. There were no smiles from anyone, despite the fact it claimed to be happy hour; the music was intrusive, the seating options limited, the decor and atmosphere bland and insipid and frankly, I hated it from the minute I stepped in there. It is cold and wet tonight and it was suggested to us when we got there that we might like to sit outside. When we asked whether there were heaters, the answer was no, but it might be a bit warmer if we sat nearer to the building. We bore that in mind and sat inside, funnily enough, where everyone else was sitting.
We left in search of somewhere to eat. I didn't have my special list with me, but having returned home am horrified to see that the place we ended up was on it. It was a higher-end curry house and although the service was very professional, the standard of food wasn't great. I love curry. When we moved to Liverpool from the Midlands, I missed a good curry. Since we have moved here, we have had one good Indian food experience, and that was in a place which cost peanuts. This place cost cashews and we almost laughed when they brought the food out and that was before we tasted it.
Whine, whinge. I don't like writing negative reviews about anything, unless it is crazy bureaucratic systems of course (see rest of blog for examples) and then I love it. There are so many glorious places to eat in this foodie-city that I feel bad that we couldn't share one of them. I don't know whether that means I am becoming proud of where I live, or I am starting to demand more from a country which seems to Expect. I'll leave that up to you to decide because I have a cold and I'm tired now. Night x
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