Well, it was a public convenience. Once.
Years ago the Guardian food writer did a piece about a new Curry house that had opened in London. It served great food, apparently, and had the novelty factor of being in a former public convenience. The walls were still all tiled and everything. He really raved about the place.

"That sounds worth a visit" we said to ourselves, and as luck would have it a bunch of our old workmates were coming down to London to visit us that very day. So we reckoned we'd meet up, tour the city a bit, have a few drinks and then go for a Ruby at this new place.

We had a great day, I have to say; tooling round the city and our favourite drinking haunts, then off to this much vaunted gaff.

It was actually quite early on in the evening, so it wasn't especially busy. So we ordered our food and sat in in the underground room and had another beer while we waited. Yeah, it did indeed still have the tiles, how novel! Lucky they pulled out the urinals though, eh? hehehe.

Dave's gone a bit quiet though hasn't he?

And then the Chicken Tikka starters arrived, and Dave suddenly stopped being quiet. Dave was now going "Hrurrrrgh!" and spewing liberally over the table (he had the good grace to miss the food) and the floor.

But we were good, you know. We went upstairs and got cleaning gear, mops and everything, and tidied up, and then noshed into our starters.

By this time Dave was beyond help. He was locked in the toilet calling Huey and Ralph at the top of his lungs. The problem was that there was now a steady stream of people coming downstairs, no doubt on the back of the glowing review, and they all had to go past that toilet door. To a man (or woman) they said something like "Eurgh, there's someone being noisily sick in the toilets" and turned around, never to return. I daresay there was a whiff of aroma that was not garam masala in the air, as well.

You have to put a brave face on these situations, don't you? "I don't suppose Dave's going to want his chicken now, is he?" said Mary. So we ate his starter for him.

Apologies, then, Curry House in Former Underground Public Convenience Whose Name I Can't Remember. It turned out your Former Public Convenience wasn't quite so former as you might have wanted. I hope we didn't bugger up your business for you by making it uninhabitable on the day your glowing review was published. But at least we weren't there on the day the critic was, so look on the bright side.
(richardm, Thu 14 Jan 2010, 10:53, Reply)