Today is Australia Day. I should be writing about lamingtons or barbeques or national clichés applied to some form of calories but I don’t really feel like it. Perhaps this lack of inclination is in reaction to those Australian specimens currently debauched along Clapham High Street.
These patriotic revellers are a true sight. I’ve never understood the fashioning of our flag into body art (unless you’re an Olympian, which nobody outside the Clapham Grand is) or outerwear (a flag does not a cape make) or swimwear for that matter (NUTS comes to the High Street). To unite all three elements in a public street in the middle of winter in London in an unfortunate time delayed corollary those landing the First Fleet could never have foreseen.
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| A little pose for the camera, a little support to the hip displacement. A patron wilts and poses, poses and wilts during an epic wait for a table at Burger & Lobster |
OK, I admit, years ago I may have revelled on Australia Day and I may have consumed an abundance of Fosters (cringe) and I may even have enjoyed the novelty key ring I won which rotated the phrases: “Flamin’ galah” and “Grab us another Fosters would ya”…but I was not tattooed (a scratch and sniff Southern Cross sticker does not count) and I certainly didn’t wear a flag cape…before 4am (polyester is a great wind break alright!). Wonder where I put that key ring? A modern day classic…
Instead of all things antipodean, I actually feel like writing about butter. Quite un-Australian really if you think the classic Australian like beaches and looking good on beaches and butter has little place in either pursuit.
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| If The Bib takes Mayfair, he's one step closer to victory in the primaries. |
I used close to a stick of butter cooking and baking tonight – I don’t intend being near a beach for months. Should I judge myself for this non-health conscious fatty fat fat consumption in the kitchen? Definitely not. The sauce was too good and the ever-shrinking banana bread continues to beckon me from a deliberately inaccessible booby-trapped location rooms away. And yes, for future reference, when I use expression “close to” I mean “close or equal to” or more correctly “a whole stick of butter”. And if my trainer is reading this, by “butter” I mean “stomach crunches”.
Have you ever noticed buttery fingerprints act as a high-speed lubricant on a keyboard? And that banana bread crumbs act like little speed humps? No, neither have I.
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| Not to be used in conjunction with keyboards. |
I’d like to know how many sticks of butter the kitchen at Burger & Lobster use each service (29 Clarges street, Mayfair London W1J 7EF, +44 (0) 207 409 1699). It’s probably best we don’t know and just enjoy. Enjoy by the jug full with a lemon twist and a huge plate of crustacean and The Bib.
I’m a significant supporter of The Bib and his campaign for introduction to certain civilised adult eating environs. And before you go there, I’m not talking about any weird adult-as-baby fetishist thing, but certain dining tables where the abandon of joyous gluttony to often results in a hefty dry cleaning investment. For example The Bib is a perfect partner to any form of laksa, Singapore crab, borscht with a slippery spoon, fresh udon at Koya when your hangover hinders your usual precision chopstick skills and everything served anywhere and lathered in butter. I should have consulted The Bib before dinner tonight and I could have avoided a steamy evening with Vanish.
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| The Bib works hard for every vote and takes his time to understand the needs of his electorate. |
I’m happy The Bib has set up permanent campaign headquarters in Mayfair. After close to two hours wait (and downing two bottles of bubbles at a nearby bar) his services were indispensible as we slid our way through three grilled and doused lobsters and an entirely gratuitous lobster brioche (a faux starter) last Friday. I don’t understand at all the business model that supports a flat rate £20 for whole lobster, brioche or burger…turnover explains so much, cross product subsidisation a little more…but then numbers were never my thing and butter certainly is so...thank you to Burger & Lobster and you good Russians you and all the burger orderers in the house for what ever commercial genius lets this happen.
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| Yuuuummm, look at all that delicious salad I still have to go! |
Between the butter jugs and bibs, the tool kit and flying meaty bits there may live an argument that Burger & Lobster is best with friends rather than a hot date. Yes, yes you say, Kate Hudson scored Matthew McConaughey over a similar scene, but in real life you will feel ill afterwards. Good ill. Happy ill. Roman feasting ill. But ill enough to be indisposed from activities you may like to undertake without the services of The Bib or the moisturising properties of butter…unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case, good luck to you.
@MissDevour13
