return to worldwidereview.com,
the home of critical reviews
From: NOT art reviews Category: Art Date: 18 July 2008 Time: 03:57 PM Review: A taste of hell and a heavenly view. Out the window the sea in all its infinite wisdom. Inside a canteen tray cafe where you start your journey round the conveyor belt of the failed catering universe, with unappealing cakes, move to "deli style" which need more sets of quotes than would make sense to indicate its distance from any possible deli, sandwiches, and hot food whose menu is hard to find, until finally you can ask for coffee. Perhaps the more than 3/4 uneaten plates of food that we cleared from the table by the window should have warned us. Heedless we waited with a little hungry optimism for our meals. The coffee, "cappucino", is a vast cauldron of ersatz coffee served with the usual dusting of chocolate style powder, no addiction of caffeine could make me finish mine, hopefully it will be recycled one day to fuel hybrid cars. The "sandwiches" arrived with a pathetic bowl of crisps and a "salad" garnish, mine was a hard to chew mess of cheese and tinny old tuna all steaming hot and disgusting. Another guest refused to eat their wrap of duck, claiming the inserted cucumber was inedible because of being warm, I thought that the least of the problems she would face with that abomination of a chinese duck pancake, the friendly staff gave her the money back. The third guest had gone for a simple chicken and bacon sandwich with "mayonaisse", but gave up after two bites. The childrens menu seemed to please the innocent child, who munched down some rubbery curls of pasta reheated (grilled) in a slop of tomato, and didnt complain about her dehydrated jam donut. I focused on the view to keep my tuna from being released back into the wild (or at least a view of it) and we staggered out into Debenhams, a department store with little hope for the future. The other people there had seemed less than ecstatic with the "deli style" dining, stomaching it bravely, uncomplaining and soothed perhaps by gazing out to sea. The old and the poorish can not expect much more except to pay to sit somewhere vaguely pleasant munching rubbish, at least they haven't bricked up the windows yet and installed flat screen tvs.