Cafe Reviews

The Tristram Shandy - John Dalton Street. Manchester

All the men who work here look like brothers with the same facial whiskers. The new grey haired one is especially chirpy with the breeches of a cad and teeth as sharp as a raven’s beak. ‘A pox on your Luncheon Vouchers Sir, A Pox!!’ he is frequently heard to say. Beautiful PVC sash windows and a chipped hobby horse in the children’s area. Trade has been boosted by a new influx of Town Hall clerks slumming it over the daily special – fortified mutton gruel served in a chamber pot of menk.

The Dogs Bollocks – Lace Market. Nottingham

Since the sad demise of the magnificent ‘Tony’s Donkey Meat Emporium Café and Grill’ The Dogs Bollocks has plugged the orifice neatly by serving the finest Doner dog’s bollock’s kebabs this side of Beijing. Random giblet and offal debris strewn around the counter is a healthy sign that the produce is fresh. The proprietor Arthur Grimshaw  has smooth symmetrical hair thanks to years of Brylcream abuse, skin the texture of leatherette and something decidedly ‘of the night’ about him.

The Copper Kettle – Cambridge Gardens Hastings.

The ideal chill-out zone for those wishing to sign on early. Specialises in ‘milky splosh’ (one tea bag – twenty cups – lashings of Lidl semi-skimmed – Demerara = 6p) and mushrooms saturated in five day old pig dripping served on bleached white Aldi bread. Passive smoking is de-rigueur, as is a built up foot, a nervous tic and a general lack of personal hygiene. Ingrid Pitworker, a Swedish expat, now married to Hermann Snowball, a retired Hastings Fisherman, runs the café with an iron hand, an eye patch and a walking stick with a petrified ram’s head on its end. If you haven’t tried Ingrid’s cabbage and turnip omelette, you haven’t lived.

The Iron Lung – Empire Street Digbeth.

It is still open to debate whether Microbiologist Hesten Blowfeld, discovered Polio in his soup in this establishment or not. Critics point out that he was struck off the scientific register several years ago for trying to disprove Darwinian theory by building an Ark in his garden shed chock full of giraffes, pterodactyls, rhinos, brontosauruses, chaffinches, stegosauruses, mere cats, chimpanzees, tyrannosauruses, poodles, bats etc. Andy Mcintit Professor of Thermodynamics and Prostitution Theory at Grimsby Polytechnic wrote: ‘There is no hard evidence for molecules-to-man evolution but it doesn’t alter the fact that this sad twat obviously just wanted a free bowl of soup.’
However the bad press has clearly affected The Iron Lung with serious consequences. Recently they had to let Orlish Thrump go, the sweaty Scot, who’d successfully managed 3 months of cold turkey and two months without dripping on peoples plates. Sadly he’s now back on the brown and shouts at trees in the Bull Ring with random consequences.