OhNomGod.
A fictional food blogger explores London's dining scene, reviewing real and not so real establishments, while delivering satirical and absurdist reviews that blend humour with unexpected twists.
Shortlisted, IrishBlogAwards 2016
“Made me think of Black Books” Islingtoniam, Reddit
“What did I just read?” - [deleted user], Reddit
Food Blog, 2016-2017 (RIP).
This was a take down of the attitudes and behaviours that had built up around food and social media around that time.
The blog helped me to understand structure, building narrative, dialogue and the importance of landing frequent jokes. It had it’s faults, comments were mostly kind. Some people even thought it was real.
The unkind comments, I took those and worked them into storylines on the blog. Everything is content.
This is an extract from; Beak, London’s First Regurgitation Restaurant. (2016)
I was invited to review Beak, a brand new chicken restaurant that has just hatched in Dalston. It’s a gentrified chicken joint that joins the likes of Bird, Le Coq and Chicken Shop on the London scene. But with all of these well established and much loved chicken emporiums how does Beak plan to stand out? By being London’s first Regurgitation Restaurant, that’s how.
The regurgitation movement is going through something of a comeback, you could almost say it’s repeating on us, or it’s back for seconds, I could go on. The pseudo-science behind it suggests the primary eater takes in most of the bad stuff (such as fat), while the secondary eater gets more of the good stuff (like nutrients). I know the way to my heart is through my stomach. But could Beak make it to my heart via my stomach and a stranger’s stomach too?
We got off at Dalston Kingsland on the unseasonably cold March evening. The queue was literally out the door and onto the street. Tonight was a preview night for bloggers, Instagrammers and Twitter Influencers. As we were seated I looked around the room and it was a veritable ‘who’s who’ and ‘who’s that’ of the London food blogging community.
The guys from the Symmetrical Sides blog were there with their self centring compass, pencil, stencil, eraser, sharpener, ruler, protractor, 45 and 60 degree set square to ensure all the side dishes were perfectly symmetrical. Absolutely love the blog guys!
Those two are still recovering from their recent Insta-drama that lit up the internet. It was all over a pen that featured in one symmetrical side photo. Was the pen on the left symmetrical? ‘It is’ screamed one half of the internet ‘it is not’ screamed the other half of the internet. For 72 hours the world watched in awe as #penisout and #penisin unfolded through tweets and, not for the first time in the history of the internet, dick pics.
…Back to our chicken meal and the chef returned and leaned over our plates. He regurgitated our mains of two chicken burgers, hash browns and an egg. “Ketchup or brown sauce” he asked. Both of us said ketchup, in this context brown sauce might be one culinary experience too far. “Bon Appetite” he said walking away. “We ordered fries!” I shouted, so he came back and one by one gave us the fries and some bonus dip we hadn’t asked for! It had the perfect je-ne-sais-quois aftertaste!
AI give me a visual for this extract…
