I remember that in 1971 I had ordered sweet and sour pork balls in a Chinese fast food place on the corner of Fosse Road North and King Richard’s Road in Leicester, but found them too disgusting to eat. In 1998 I left of the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway, West Cork, for a similar reason. Allowing for the possibility of something having slipped my mind, I am willing to grant that the same thing might have happened somewhere, sometime in the 1980s. So the events of last Sunday were about the fourth such event in nearly 40 years.

We decided, spontaneously, to go out to Norton Street (Leichhardt) for lunch. We started at the “cheap and cheerful” end, and decided to go into a cafe/restaurant known as Grind. “Grilled fish and chips” sounded interesting enough, and we both decided to have it. Before sinking to describe the food, I will mention that the waitress, who spoke hardly any English, made a genuine attempt to be charming.

The food came. Being “cheap and cheerful”, although far from dirt cheap, I could just about accept that the salad was uninteresting, and that there was too much on the plate, presumably in order to make it look as if there was more food there than was really the case. I could just about, although with disappointment, accept the stick-like little “chips”, the sort produced with the least care and attention possible. The fact that all the other food was plonked on top of the chips has no excuse, but would not cause me to walk out, merely not to go back. The main part of my fish did not taste too bad either. However, on the top was a curious spirally-flowery cut piece of fish, whose taste can fairly be described as utterly foul. Only a death-wish would have inspired one to eat it. It is impossible to believe that anyone in the kitchen knew what it tasted like.

We wondered whether to make a scene, but decided for the “quiet life” option of commenting if we were asked whether the food had been all right. So after a few minutes of toying with what was on our plates, I went to pay. No, nobody did ask whether we had enjoyed the food, not even the common courtesy of that question, let alone the genuine concern that should have resulted from customers leaving with their plates nearly full after five minutes.

As an amusing coda to the incompetence of the staff, the bill was for $41.30. I gave the waiter at the till a $50 bill and a $2 piece. He opened the till, shut the till, open it again, put some money in, took it out again, shut the till. Clearly it was beyond him to work out that I needed a $10 bill and 70 cents. He then turned to the “manager”, gave him my $52, and asked him to “sort it out”.

I should mention, in case the managers and staff were different that day, that this happened at lunchtime on Sunday 27 December.

We then went down the road to a French place for delicious food, served with care, and costing very much the same.

As usual you can click the picture for a bigger view

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Which is the fake that’s pretending to be the other one? If you look closely (you might have to click the pictures to get a large enough version to read properly) you’ll see even the warning messages have the same wrong grammar – and even wrong spellings!

All I can say for definite is that the upper one, with the hologram, has the familiar, heady, heavy perfume I expect from that kind of incense. The other one has similarities, but with overtones of the savage tobacco my old Uncle Len – may he rest in peace – used to put into his aluminium-stemmed pipe and smoke on a Sunday afternoon in the living room of that house not far from the Hagley Road.

What is my take on the taste? Very cheap, dirty, over-perfumed soap.