I don’t do Groupon, it’s not really a conscious thing, more that my first act upon waking, is to delete all emails that aren’t 100% necessary. Groupon, sadly, falls into said category.
Friends of mine are, thankfully, more discerning.
X had tweeted that she was considering buying a Groupon for the tasting menu at Les Trois Garcons. Motivated, by, a twitter related lack of inhibition combined with a mildly masochistic desire to see if all the reviews I’d read were true, I agreed to accompany.
As this was to be a Tuesday evening in the beating heart of Shoreditch we decided that dress was to be appropriate. A hipster summer dress with tied back hair and black framed glasses, brogues, tightish jeans, a cravat and a nice tweed jacket set the tone.
We were, for want of a better word, ready. Though, for what exactly, I was unsure.
Arriving early we ducked into Beach Blanket Babylon. At just past six in the evening it was quiet. Faintly threadbare rouge chaise longues, gold lame chandeliers, a menu that read like a priapagic fourteen year olds idea of sophistication, double entendres poking awkwardly out of the sheepishly crossed legged pages of the list.
We passed on the house cocktails.
Whisky sour was a trifle too sweet for my tastes, an Amaretto sour that X demolished as if it were soda.
Shush you, we’ve all done worse.
And so, on to les Trois Garcons. Kitsch doesn’t really work as a descriptor, better to imagine a glamorous old pub, all paneled walls, prominent marble bar, decorated mirrors and stately windows. Now imagine that this august building had been left in the hands of several wannabe television make over show hosts all of whom had been blessed with a limited budget and a tasteasectomy. Now we commence to close upon a suitable image.
We’re seated beneath a dusty glass aviary full of faded stuffed song birds, there are cream glass fig leaf fountain chandeliers, stuffed tigers, a boulevard of hanging handbags, all clutches, as if they were still grasping at any dignity they might have once had.
The pages of the wine list were dog eared and the prices leveraged, but this was the eastern edge of the city and a nod to hedging is de rigeur.
An overtly plated amuse bouche unexpectedly amused, then, as if on a roll the foie gras starter also failed to horrify. Our eyes met, we’d been hoping for the worst, steeling our critical edges, honing the cutting comments we’d been preparing to tweet.
This. Wasn’t. As. Bad. As. We. Thought. It. Was. Going. To. Be.
Smarmily I pointed out that I’d lunched at Pollen Street Social, where the taste was a measured as the seasoning. Perfectly judged. X, alluded to the fact that she’d actually made it to the gym in the last week and as such won that particular battle of the wits.
A fish course followed without incident, as did venison fillet, still redolent of the musk, sweat and earth that all good venison ought to be. Chocolate and cream fondant came dressed with a rough blackberry coulis, a jug of rich chocolate sauce stood sentinel in the middle of the table.
Obviously X broke first, pouring said sauce directly onto her spoon before shoveling it into an unashamedly open mouth. I raised an eyebrow.
We broke from our retro revelry to take numerous photos of ourselves on our mobiles, oblivious to how out of keeping with our evening this was. For it was only just dawning, quite where we had been going.
Straight back to 2005. When Shoreditch was located squarely in the Sunday supplements, Hackney was still rough, and Dalston was yet to be invented.
The décor was stylishly boho, velvet curtains still ruffled with intrigue, eyeliner was smudged, Kate Moss advertised some sort of toilet cleaner (Rimmel) and taxidermy meant you could read Charlie Brooker whilst snorting coke and not feel like a walking cliché.
Obviously not content with our Groupon time machine, we were glutton, we’d managed two venues that stank of the near past, visions of cargo pants still teetering on respectability were swimming across our eyes. There had to be more, this mid naugties speedball needed following, it was time to snuffle the wank well and truly.
Lounge lovers is just round the corner, all three venues are within an ironic piss of each other. A fake hippos head protrudes out of a mock Romanesque folly of a booth, there are mismatched chairs, and faux aristocratic sofas, all cocooned in a modern theatre like warehouse space, walls softened with the dirty red drapes, unwashed and looking as bored as the bar staff.
The back of the room, we sat and marveled at the goateed guy across from us he stared at the slim blonde eastern European girls tits, whilst she talked loudly about her alien abduction, her brunette friend stared elsewhere, anywhere but at her courting companions.
Two bitter tears later, that was our drinks, not our consciences, we were all naughtied out. Back to the Bishopsgate night air, tubes and trains returning us to the present day.
I shan’t pretend that I didn’t enjoy our evening of naughtie snuffling, I was imagining D list television presenters fumbling with page three girls in corners, I was living an evening that I’d only ever seen in the gossip pages. I was still moderately sober and I hadn’t mortgaged my house on the badly cut Columbian that would have made it all acceptable in its heyday.
Good times eh x.
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