Mr F.
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La Barca Restaurant – Fifty Shades of Overcooked
I took my girlfriend to La Barca for what was supposed to be a romantic evening. Starters arrived at light speed which was immediately suspicious. The croquettes were glorious little golden grenades, crunchy and creamy, the kind of thing you would happily write poetry about. But the Russian salad was greasy enough to fuel a tractor. My girlfriend normally tears through a salad like a combine harvester but this time she just prodded it while giving me side eye. Something was wrong.
Then came the wait. Forty minutes for mains. Forty. By minute twenty I was moaning, “What in the name of holy steak is going on back there?” By minute thirty I was checking the menu again just in case I had accidentally ordered something that needed to be hunted, butchered, and blessed by a priest. By minute forty I was practically narrating my own breakdown out loud and my girlfriend was hissing at me to keep my voice down.
When the mains finally arrived I realised silence would have been kinder. My entrecôte, which I had ordered rare, the kind of steak that should bleed seductively when you touch it, had been incinerated. What I got was steak jerky with trust issues. A faint pink smear in the middle, like the last gasp of a dying romance. My girlfriend’s veal with coffee sauce looked like it had been left on a radiator too long.
Flavour? None. I moaned again, louder this time, like a man at a football match watching his team concede in the ninety third minute. We did not finish. We could not. The food had defeated us.
Dessert was meant to save the day. My crème Catalan was fine if unremarkable, but hers was frozen solid in the middle. Frozen custard. She nearly broke a tooth and I nearly broke into a rant about how this was no longer dining, it was performance art in sadism.
And the bill? That was the final showpiece. We tried to leave, queued politely, and the waitress, clearly enjoying my muttering and theatrical sighs, decided to serve another couple in front of us, then seat a new table, bring them drinks, and practically adopt them before even acknowledging we existed. I am convinced she was prolonging my agony for sport.
By the time we escaped I was worn out from the moaning, my girlfriend was embarrassed, and the romance had been cooked out of the evening along with my steak.
