St. John's Wood, London

A bank holiday stroll down the delightfully average St. John’s Wood high street led me to set my heart upon the supposedly famous Harry Morgan restaurant upon falling for the siren cries of my hungry stomach. An American diner-styled eatery located towards the end of a really boring main street for a really boring part of London.

I opened the door and set foot into the last days on Earth. If I were blind, I’d have thought that the people inside were all fucking and killing each other whilst all wearing clip-on microphones transmitting to the loudest PA system in any universe, fiction or otherwise. Utter pandemonium, and not just because it was a bank holiday, this is the general underlying theme to the ‘New York deli’ that they’re trying to pass themselves off as.

A waitress soon showed me to an empty table towards the back of the room and promptly left us there to wallow in the chaotic screaming of small-minded assholes all trying to out-volume each other in a desperate bid to get their mundane stories heard by their mouth-breathing friends. Absolutely everybody was bellowing at what would’ve been deemed too loud for a death metal concert.

I wiped the blood from my ears and ordered breakfast while my partner in crime ordered the blueberry and banana pancakes. After the waitress jotted down our order, I asked her if she could find us a quieter area for us to dine. Judging by her facial reaction, it was as if I had murdered her family and then politely asked her for cab fare home. Disgusted by my request, she scuttled off like Gollum with a bad back then returned a few seconds later with a no. I couldn’t hear her over the bone-crunching screams of some idiot who was complaining about her friend’s picture she posted on Facebook, mind, but a shake of the head and her turning on a penny to pull away from my ridiculous request aura underlined her answer.

The food came at what was probably a normal time for a restaurant, but because by this point I had boiled almost all of my blood away internally by using the purest form of anger to raise my body heat, time seemed to have slowed down almost to the fading beat of my struggling heart.

 

The grunting Orc waitress plopped the plates down and then fought her way through the thick mist of shouting toward the other side of the room. Although I finished the whole thing due to a desperate paranoia clawing its way up my back that this place would somehow descend into a bloodbath and this would be my noisy tomb, it seemed to me that it was all made from pencil case erasers. Everything on the plate was created from the same ingredients (sponge, rubber, PVA glue, oil) and then coloured and shaped differently. It was an empty feeling once the plate was cleared, and one I was expected to pay £12 for the displeasure.

The pancakes didn’t fare better; thick foamy yoga mats encapsulating salt and possibly laughs from the owner, frying gym garbage he’s dumpster dived for and selling it for £9.

Quite possibly one of the shittest places to go and have a meal. Ridiculously overpriced for woefully crap food. The staff was plentiful, but all seemed like really crap and cheap robots with a dying battery. I’ve noticed that I’ve become increasingly vitriolic as this review has progressed but it’s an accurate representation of how this reviewer felt as time worn on whilst there. The bill was paid and we ran through the fog of noise towards the door where the outside light tried to penetrate the atmosphere.

I stepped outside. The sun slowly bathed my skin, and my tattered armour dropped to the ground with a thud. I had made it out alive.