‘Salmon comes as pallid, morose and wanly pink as an unwilling bridesmaid’
If, as Dante imagined, Hell is where sins are punished with your own bespoke and exquisite torture, mine might look a lot like the new Nova complex in Victoria. I’ll be condemned to wander its echoing concrete corridors, blasted by a gritty wind, lugging myself from spreadsheet-designed outlet to concept-driven “fast casual”, forever cramming joyless food into blighted face, eating, bloating, never satisfied.
There will be awful “happy hours” at Jason Atherton’s The Drunken Oyster above his basic-bitch Hai Cenato, where the grimly flirtatious barman spends way too long creating “the best martini you’ve ever tasted, laydee”. A weeny glass of unremarkable spirit that has been shoogled with ice: 12 quid aye-thank-yew. Or a “taptail”: dear God, I’m sorry for my sins already. There’ll be days spent painfully ingesting the bottomless brunch at sports bar Greenwood, while bellowing salarymen play ping-pong or pool; or feeling the tinny jangle of my fillings as they flinch from the sugary, Oliver Bonas tweeness of “Aussie-style” Timmy Green and an eternity of flabby popcorn shrimp, while nobody can be arsed to clean tables. There will be chain pizzas and doughnuts: torment by mass-produced carb. Should Satan momentarily turn his back, I’ll scuttle to the estimable Aster for smoked fish, where the al-fresco seating, desperately prettified by floral garlands, looks like a pass-ag reproach to its surroundings.
Related: Dastaan, Ewell, Surrey: ‘Such freshness, such zip and zing’ – restaurant review
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