The Zetter
St John's Square
86-88 Clerkenwell Rd
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
020 7324 4444
www.thezetter.com
by Malcolm Eggs
A flight to Madrid, sixty-five fish fingers, a "Garden Dreamscape beading kit", 100ml of Panacur 10% (For Dogs), a full English breakfast at The Zetter. All these things cost £16.99. I'm no regular patron of lists such as this: it's all too easy to find oneself impaled on the horns of dilemmas such as 'dinner vs more wine'. Just spend as required and let Future Malcolm work it out - that's the key. But as Orva Easy and I emerged from The Zetter, a boutique hotel in the historic backlands of Clerkenwell, I found myself imagining a million different Malcolms - this one with his shampoo and pen knife, that one with his square foot of office space - and I had this horrible suspicion that nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine of them received better value for money than the one trying to get to the point in this review.
I knew it would be disappointing before the waitress even reached us - the light was good, I'll give them that - and the closer the ghoulish rashers that crowned the heap loomed, the worse my morning became. Cooked on one side only, they were rarer than a man campaigning to Save the Diplodocus. My first instinct was to dash for the solace of the poached egg, but its undercooked core of translucent goo would give me days of nasty flashbacks. The toast was cut from an excellent loaf but would buttering it have been impossible? Nondescript mushroom and tomato and a likeable (if dense) sausage could only try vainly to balance the books, because a breakfast this expensive should be a wonderful memory, not - at best - a boring anecdote.
2 comments:
Oh that's well-crafted review. I wish it could have gone on longer. Perhaps I should go and do some work - people are beginning to whisper "and what exactly does he do" as they walk past my desk.
The Zetter Restaurant closed years ago. It is now Bistrot Bernard Loubet.
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