Themes can only get better…
IF ANYONE ever recommends to you eating in a restaurant with a great concept, my advice would be to be run fast in the opposite direction. Restaurants with great food are one thing, but eating spots based around a zany idea are almost always the last place you would actually want to pick up a knife and fork.
I know, because I have been there and done that.
Only Disney could have come up with the Rainforest Café. Quite why they felt the need to bring an Amazon rain forest-themed eatery to a basement off Leicester Square in London remains almost as big a mystery as why I decided to eat there. Let’s just blame hunger and optimism. Both ended up being disappointed by the Rasta Pasta and screeching monkeys. You can judge the experience by a recent comment on Google reviews: “The face painter was quite good.”
But it is by no means the daftest concept currently trading. Competing for that is favourite hipster hangout the Cereal Killer Café in Shoreditch. It serves, wait for it, bowls of cereal. The craze has now transferred to Manchester, where the Black Milk Cereal Café has opened offering four types of cereal for £4.20. The owners say they are now looking for sites in Scotland. At least we have been warned.
However, the prize for the most out-there concept must surely go to Come Fry With Me, a dedicated chip restaurant with an aviation theme opening later this year in London.
It doesn’t even have the decency to be built around a concept.
Instead it is simply based on a terrible pun, but that is not to say it won’t be a success. Founder Tiffany Plant gave up her job in finance to launch the project after eating a bowl of truffleflavoured fries. They were so delicious she thought they deserved to be centre stage, and now they will be, alongside chips with steak and stilton, bacon and melted cheese, and Marmite for the real high flyers.
Given our love affair with the humble fried potato, she may just have a hit on her hands – unlike Jamie Oliver, who, despite a brilliant track record in the food and restaurant business, still came up with the flop brand Union Jack’s.
Three of the four branches of the British-themed restaurant chain have now closed. Looking at a menu which includes English Kir and Empire Spiced Chicken, it’s not hard to see why.
Amid the wasteland of concept failures, there are a few shining lights. The Breakfast Club Cafés in London are great places for people like me who would happily eat scrambled eggs or bacon sandwiches morning, noon and night.
And who can forget the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouses, now rebranded and new for 2015.
Maybe the Rainforest Chip & Cereal Café is just a matter of time.