I’m afraid it’s strike two for the self-styled purveyors of Good British Grub. After SF’s demolition of Albion (see ‘Putting the knife in’, 23 June, below) it was my turn to get angry last weekend, this time at s&m off the Portobello Road. The initials of this chain stand for ‘sausage and mash’; it is a testament to the poverty of its cuisine, however, that our party of four (heterosexual) men would probably have derived more enjoyment from communal participation in the other entendre that its witty name generates.
As well as the aforementioned bangers, s&m’s menu offers other ostensibly alluring items such as roast pork and crackling butty and steak baguette. Except when we went they were out of the roast pork and crackling butty. And the steak baguette. Never mind, if the restaurant is called ‘sausage and mash’ we’d be alright choosing from the eight proposed variations on the dish wouldn’t we?
Well, no actually. I’m not quite sure where to start. With the inconsistency between the sign outside proclaiming ‘more banger for your buck’ and the appearance on my plate, at a cost of £8, of two measly sausages? With the dry, unloved, inept mash? With the lukewarm, gloopy, tasteless gravy? With the fact that whoever is responsible for s&m apparently thinks ‘bubble and squeak’ means mashed potato with a few peas in it?
No, we really don't
Or, perhaps, with the whole cheerfully ironic, old-fashioned yet hip, archly knowing yet transparently crass and cynical vibe of the place? Because what grates almost as much as being served sub-standard bangers and mash in a restaurant that claims to specialize in it, is being served it in surroundings bathed in such a horrid example of the uncritical mass-produced retro-mania so frequently passed off as cultural insight that it made me want to scream ‘What the f*** is wrong with the present?’ In case the plethora of Beatles record covers and newspaper cuttings on the walls weren’t enough for its patrons to get the picture, s&m is also decorated with patronizing black-and-white pictures of our forbears, overlaid with tediously unfunny captions; the arrival, towards the end of our meal, of the phoney Cockney tones of Dick van Dyke over the café’s airwaves only served perfectly to condemn the utter falsity of the enterprise. Don’t go.
