Dangerous Thinking

As we do most weeks, Mark Pruul and I met for our Wednesday afternoon board meeting in central London.

There was something even more important on the agenda than the MarkOne Creative Consultants’ brochure copy – we were going for a curry afterwards.

We’d met in the Charing Cross Hotel, and didn’t have a clue where we’d find a decent curry house, until I remembered there were a couple on Bedford Street, running between the Strand and Covent Garden.

Then I saw it – an old favourite, The Strand Tandoori. It must be 12 or 15 years since I’d been in there. And it still had the fish tank in the window.

Eyes clouded with nostalgia, and memories of a chicken dish stuffed with spiced meat coming to the fore, I missed the universal sign of crap food. The man standing in the doorway enticing hungry punters in. 20% off, if you order before 7:30, he said.

We sat down, started a wonderful cooling bottle of Cobra beer each, and nibbled on poppadums, while we ordered our food.

What followed was quite the worst Indian meal I’ve had for many a long year – there was even a definite flavour of Oxo cubes in one of the desperately under-spiced dishes of mediocrity.

To cap it all, I had a couple of visits to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I’ve been feeling nauseous all day. I haven’t caught up with Mark to see if he has the same symptoms, or if I’m suffering from that stomach bug thing that’s going round.

Food poisoning or not, I’m not going back there.

If only I’d applied one of my primary rules of restaurants…