The Barren Commission

We had several things to celebrate last weekend - getting shot of the Americans, a birthday, the five-month anniversary of mini-Mig-Hell - that all pretence of staying up to date with the cultchah evaporated in the surprisingly benign sun. We did not even watch the fireworks, preferring instead to take in the, yes, surprisingly dark, but utterly baffling Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban. The film was bearable partly because of the slight deviation from the normal Potter story arc (the suspiciously helpful new guy is actually helpful rather than an acolyte of satan!), and the presence of monsters called Dementors, which was the name we were going to give to our first scungle* band. We shall now fall back on The Dementalists, although that has snotty gang of high school punk misfits written all over it.

Where have we been dining recently? Song, at least in take out form, which produced a massaman curry good enough to refry. We are unlikely to embrace the monster queues and exposed brick of the etablishment any time soon, especially since Cutesome beat us to the punch, but it is, to paraphrase the Mighty Guide not quite as comprehensive as Long Tan, although it is slighty cheaper.

The titanic rock pig-tastic trough of pig where we were guided by Cutesome was BLT Steak (that should win a prize or something for awesomely bad sentence construction). BLT Steak (follow the link for free jaaaaaazz!) had very solid starters, some really cool twists on the sides, and inexplicably dozy, only just the right side of insulting, service. We did get real popovers, and a good shot at the cheese cart, and free carrot cake, but also suffered epic waits between courses, were denied a little dippy thing, and received a truncated version of the wine list. We were also treated to a never-ending succession of couples and the next-door table, like we had the death sentence on 12 systems or something.

We'd go back, don't get us wrong, and we thank and offer mad love to Cutesome for the experience, but we'd make sure we were orange, dressed in a stripy short, and waving bills around like they were a Mets hat in Queens. It's that kind of scene.

*Scungle. A potent mixture of scuzz rock and jungle. Doesn't really exist, except in Dillinja's head.