I went out for a curry tonight. Maybe not the healthiest of food, but like a condemned man I want to make the most of my last couple of days before a doctor tells me I am never allowed to have fun again in my life.
We've been to this restaurant a couple of times before, (though the last time we arrived at 10.30pm and they said it was too late to eat in so we got a takeaway) and the food is really excellent, yet every time I pass it there is no one in there. It's in a trendy part of Hammersmith. It's got lovely food. You'd think it would be doing well (and maybe its takeaway and delivery business is better), but as a connoisseur of curry I am surprised that this excellent restaurant has so little trade. Or maybe I just pass it when it's not that busy.
We got there early tonight at about 6.30 and there were three other people at the next table. The restaurant manager recognised us and congratulated us on getting in early this time. The man at the next table, overhearing our conversation told us it paid to get here before the rush, clearly assuming we had been turned away from a heaving restaurant before.
And yet every time I pass the waiters are leaning against tables, idling around and seem almost surprised if you come in the door.
Weird.
The food we ordered was excellent again, but about twenty minutes into the meal I started feeling a bit uneasy about something, though I wasn't sure what it was as yet. I had tuned in to the music they were playing as we ate and it was a jaunty Indian tune, the kind that will be familiar to you if you've eaten in an Indian restaurant, quite upbeat but faintly irritating in its jolliness. It was a bit intrusive to be honest and I thought to myself that if Stewart Lee was here he might have to leave, as he gets very irritated by music being imposed on him in this way. But then I began to recognise what had made me feel uneasy and almost slightly queasy. This one four minute piece of music which was repetitive enough within itself, was playing on a loop. All the time we had been sitting there the same piece of music had been playing over and over again. Now I had spotted it it made things even worse. It was slightly maddening. Too British to complain or ask if they could play something else, but also slightly fascinated to see if they would notice and change it, I let it play on. We were in the restaurant for well over an hour and must have listened to that same piece of music consciously or unconsciously about twenty times. That's not creating ambience. That's torture.
And it went on too long to be an accident. This was restaurant policy. They played the same track all night, on a loop, without even a pause between plays - straight on as if it was just one album, over and over again.
This was bad enough as a patron, but I thought of the poor staff, who not only had to endure this pastiche of their culture and very identity once a night, but all night, over and over again. I predict that one day one of them will go mad and take a kitchen knife and cut up all the customers in the place. Which luckily will be no customers.
Was this why the place was empty? Had they got everything else right: the food, the location, brilliant and attentive service and then fucked up by only investing in one CD, which only had one track? Had the other customers even noticed what had unsettled them. Had they gone, enjoyed the experience, but been left with something nagging at them and a sense of nausea and a feeling that someone was trying to extract a confession from them and never gone again.
It was interesting how one thing could affect an evening.
And for the rest of the night, even once I had gone, the infuriating tune echoed around my head, having etched itself into my brain cells. I fear it might never leave me.
