Larissa "my grandma surfs with fire wall." D.'s Profile

Mexican food is a divisive thing.

If you like yours bland and expensive, you might want to try out Lupita.

Conversely, if you like your guacamole to be absolutely heaving with onions and chillis, therefore obliterating any tasty freshness of the comparatively tiny portion of avocado, then Lupita's got you covered too.

For me, Lupita seriously underperformed, as I like my Mexican food tasty and cheap and my guacamole refreshing and limey.  

I have granted Lupita an extra star for having mixed me a perfectly respectable margarita, even if they tried and failed to coat the rim of my glass with table salt.

That's right... table. salt.

Step 1: Walk up to food stand.

Step 2: Say, "Small Box, please".

Step 3: As and when it is necessary, point to which olives you want.

Step 4: Hand over £3.

Step 5: Inhale your epic hoard of delicious vegetarian foodstuffs along with a complimentary slice of greasy bread.

Step 6: Feel smug due to the resulting disparity in the frugality-to-fullness ratio your stomach has experienced.

Filter coffee! * Yay!

Adorably antique and mismatched cups!  Yay!

Monmouth beans!  Yay!

£2.20 for a takeaway americano? . . .

. . .

yeah. er, no.  Not for the WAM that the barista brewed me at 9:30am last Saturday morning.

Plus, I didn't like the heavily branded takeaway cup in which it was served.  Give me a plain-white cup with black lid** that screams "pretentious coffee twat" or give me nothing at all, thank you.

_________________________

*Although I didn't see the sign advertising this until I'd already ordered and the barista began brewing an americano.

**I might settle for a white lid.

2010 has been the year of the bad haircut for me.

After being given a horrifying crop in early Spring, I let my barnet grow out for months and months. I finally thought it was long enough to get it chopped into a more conventional and flattering shape, so I visited B:Zar, armed with a photo that encapsulated my style aesthetic.

I arrived on time for my appointment (the first appointment of the day) but was still made to wait over five minutes while my stylist went outside to smoke a cigarette. Okay, fine, I'd rather a happy stylist than a cranky stylist, right?

Then it all began.

I showed my photo and explained I was trying to grow my hair out of a terrible haircut several months old, that I wanted to keep as much length as was possible but not at the expense of the new haircut looking good.  He nodded, repeated some key words I said, talked confusingly about my fringe.

The shampoo was a pleasurable experience.

And then he got to work. Snip snip snip, chop, chop.  He DID listen to me and left as much length as possible; the front looked pretty good - modern and funky. But then he showed me the back.  It looked ridiculous.  And it didn't at all even match up with the front. It looked like two different haircuts haphazardly stitched together. I was a little bit horrified.  I tried to ask him to blend the two styles together a bit. He didn't understand. After some frantic hand movements and repetition of simple words, I got him to make a few more snips, but to no avail.

My hair was hopeless.  

I left £38 lighter of pocket and of self-confidence.

Oh, and, bafflingly, neither part of my haircut (front, back) looked at all like the photo I showed.

Seriously, wtf. How does this happen to me?

I would begin this review by saying, "A whole pizza for only £6.50 in Central London? It can't get any better!"

But, well, it can.

...At the Italiano Coffee Company (ICCo) on Goodge Street in Fizrovia, where you can get a whole pizza for only £5.

Sorry, Soho Joe.  Neither your pizza nor your prices was special.  But don't take this the wrong way; it was still A-OK, and I could very well be returning for some of your pizza when I'm hungry, skint and wandering around the streets of Soho - too lazy to walk up to Fitzrovia - in future.

I was a bit surprised and unsettled on my recent visit to see that the cheese had changed from one of an acceptably off-white variety to one disconcertingly reminiscent of traffic-cone orange.

Certainly this cheese product doesn't occur in nature, much less in Mexico.

And this isn't even mentioning the frighteningly chalky and cardboard-like appearance of said cheese shreds.

I shudder at the mere memory of it.

The coffee was, indeed, quite tasty and well prepared.

But I had to wait for upwards to five minutes for said coffee whilst standing awkwardly in the middle of the cafe along with other awkwardly standing people waiting for their coffees, next to even more awkwardly seated people with buggies who were begrudging my awkwardness and wishing I would just leave already so they could have some space in which to sip their cup of pretention along with their mustachioed compatriates, bouncing their hipster babies atop their laps.

...An experience that was definitely not my cup of tea.  

Er, coffee.

Best all-rounder market in London.

Fin.

This Vietnamese iced coffee is hot sex in my mouth.

I love the Brewer's Inn.  

It's right next to my flat.  

It has Queen Anne chairs on which I like to perch myself.

It has good ales, beers, ciders and perries (the wine's not-so good, though).

It has board games.

It has Sky Sports.

But what it doesn't have is good food or service.

When I order a steak with crispy beer-battered onion rings and chips and receive a plate with just steak and chips, yes, I'm going to wonder to myself where the onion rings have gone.  And, yes, I'm going to ask you about them.  And, no, I don't expect you to mumble something under your breath and bugger off, never to return until I've finished my entire meal -- no offer of a refund, no offer of a free drink, no offer of anything.  

When I order a goat's cheese crostini with a petite salad, olives and parmesan, yes, I expect said goat's cheese crostini to come accompanied by olives and parmesan, not without both of these things.

And speaking of olives, when I order a tuna niçoise salad, I expect it to come with them.  A tuna niçoise salad without olives is just tinned tuna chucked on a bed of leaves, you idiots.

So, in short, the Brewer's Inn does drinks and atmosphere pretty well.  But its food and service, particularly on Sundays, are shit.  I will never again bother with food from this place, and I'm actually beginning to reconsider which pub I will be calling 'my local'.  

Yeah, take that, Brewer's Inn!  You will no longer be receiving my bi-monthly £5 for that one drink I buy when I'm feeling particularly classy/monied and decide to drink in your establishment instead of on my couch in my pyjamas with the fraying waistband, while watching reality television and eating crisps.

Take. That.