I made the mistake of eating at Garfunkel's tonight (the restaurant, of course, not the home of the high foreheaded singer - I find it impossible to believe that you genuinely made that misunderstanding. I know you were just doing it for effect. Like you were in a crap sit-com).
I should have known better, but I was hungry and me and my friend had to be in the cinema in 35 minutes to see Starsky and Hutch (another appalling error of judgement - it failed to work on any level and was a serious waste of two hours of my life, that I would much rather have wasted playing poker on the internet).
We quickly surveyed the restaurants in the vicinity, I nearly opted for a Mexican where me and Stew once had a memorable Christmas office party when we used to work in Leicester Square (memorable only because we were the only two people in our office), but then inexplicably said "What about Garfunkel's?"
My friend inexplicably replied, "Yeah, all right," and in we inexplicably went.
I kind of thought Garfunkel's was a sort of slightly upmarket sit down foodery, which did stuff like burgers and pizzas and ribs, which whilst being trashy food, was tasty and well presented. A good few notches up from Wimpy, but probably a notch below Pizza Express. It was only later that I realised that I had been thinking of Tootsies (and the one in Chiswick at that, which is probably posher than the others).
Garfunkel's is actually a notch below Wimpy's because at least Wimpy's has the honesty to admit what it is. Garfunkel's is trying to look like something it is not.
I realised the minute that I had stepped through the door that I had made a mistake: the smell from the food already on the tables made me feel slightly sick, there were patches on the walls where paint and/or wallpaper had peeled off, the place was half empty and all the patrons appeared to be miserable looking tourists with bad hair-cuts.
It was like the waiting room for Hell, but with a slightly worse atmosphere.
As we sat down, we were presented with a menu. "I love a wipe clean menu in a restaurant," said my friend.
"Yes," I concurred indicating a food stain on my menu, "Especially when they haven't bothered to wipe it clean. But nice to have a free sample."
We were aware we were being slightly snobby, but only very slightly. We had come in for a cheap and rapid eating experience and weren't expecting anything fancy, but this place didn't even come anywhere near reaching our incredibly low expectations.
All my instincts were telling me to leave, but for fear of missing a few seconds of (what I would only later find out was) a pretty rubbish film, I decided to make the best of it and plump for a classic burger. My friend made the same choice. It looked like the thing that was least likely to be messed up. And it was already being hailed as a classic.
Our waiter was a wonderfully well-meaning fellow from somewhere in Eastern Europe and he really was doing the best with the material that was available for him. But he knew in his heart that all the charm in the world was not going to make this strange smelling eatery anything more than a service station canteen without the motorway access.
I was also slightly disorientated by the fact that he looked a bit like Peter Baynham doing a slightly fat and pasty foreign waiter character.
"Would you like fries with that?" he asked. We both did.
"And would you like to share some fries and a salad?"
I was a bit confused. We were already having fries, so why would we want to share some more fries? And then have some salad as well.
"No, I think we'll both just have our own fries."
The waiter crumpled into a ball of embarrassment and started stuttering and apologising as if he had just called my mother a whore. He laughed nervously.
"Oh no. No, no, no. What I meant to say is not "fries". Every burger comes with fries. I am sorry...."
I knew by now already that he had meant to say onion rings. I knew I didn't want onion rings and I didn't mind that he'd made a mistake. I just wanted to get our food as quickly as possible so that we could be out of this horrible place as soon as possible. I tried to tell him we didn't mind and that we didn't want anything else. But he perservered, "What I meant to say was ..er.... "onion rings". Would you like to share salad and onion rings?"
He was trying to hard and his level of commitment was completely out of kilter with his surroundings. I almost liked him enough to order extra food. But I already knew what they would be like.
Our classic burgers arrived very quickly, in fact with the kind of haste that you don't really want to experience in a restaurant. A different waiter brought them over and presented the plates to us, with a napkin over his arm. "Your classic burger, sir," he said, emphasising the "classic" and using a tone which implied that this would be the best food we'd ever eaten. Looking at the food I could only assume he was being sarcastic, but his demeanour didn't betray this for a second and I have to give him full marks for that.
As we ate I saw the bumbling apologetic Peter Baynham waiter, upon noticing people at another table taking photos (personally it's an experience I wouldn't like to commit to film -I was worried for most of the meal that the place might be hit by a terrorist bomb and that people would find out where I died and say "He was eating where?") and had offered to take a photo of them all together. It was a lovely gesture. The woman with the camera looked at him like he was mad and declined his invitation. He looked upset.
The food was worse than I imagined, in fact I think it was the worst burger I have ever had, certainly that has come on a plate anyway. I wished we'd just gone to Burger King and saved ourselves the money and had something that had been prepared with comparative love. I ate most of it, but couldn't face the fries which were stuck together and nasty. My friend managed no more than a few bites of burger before giving it up as a lost cause.
The waiter came to clear our plates. He looked at the food that we had left and asked "Was everything all right with your meal?" He was obviously personally hurt by the fact that we hadn't eaten everything. "Yes, it was lovely," we lied.
I don't think he could have taken the truth.
We left as quickly as we could.
It's a shame that the restaurant chain doesn't take half the pride over itself that that man had over his job. It made me embarrassed to think that people visiting our country will come here to eat, in a prime central location and think that this is the best we have to offer.
But after seeing Starsky and Hutch, I didn't mind too much if a few Americans ended up eating there.
