I’m genuinely about to scarper. If it weren’t for the pal being on the tube, and therefore unable to see my panicked texts shrieking, “We need to go somewhere else fast!”, you wouldn’t have seen me for dust. It’s a long time since I’ve been anywhere so initially unprepossessing. The address is Borough High Street, but I don’t expect to find Lobos squatting under a railway bridge where dustballs of rat fur and urine skitter. The entrance is a dark maw, unadorned apart from a pegboard sign announcing, “MEAT & TAPAS: the wolf is always evil if you only listen to Red Riding Hood” (vegetarians, you’d do well to give Lobos a wide berth). All very gnomic.
Waiting for the pal in a dim, tin-ceilinged room, I’m still unconvinced. Rather than being in Borough Market proper, it’s in a feeder alleyway and facing an equally leery-looking joint called Ginger Whiskey (me neither). The mood is murky. It reminds me of weird, penumbral ramen or yakitori joints in the likes of Tokyo’s Golden Gai and Piss Alley.
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