Dirty Burgers

So the Lansdowne Lunch Loafer blog is coming to an end. Friday 19th May 2006 is D-day, a sad day indeed, the day we finally kiss goodbye to our crappy (but nicely open-plan) offices, and say hello to our new offices a mile down the road. The upsetting thing is there is nowhere to go for lunch around there, a tradition we have tried to upheld since the very beginning, aided and abetted in more recent times by our blog.

The idea was simple; to provide a forum in which we could all discuss our lunch plans for the day without having a huge debate at lunchtime, wasting precious troughing time. Soon this will be a pointless debate as we will all be on sandwiches.

So as the days eb away the original four loafers came up with a strategy to get the most out of our limited time. A list was formed of all the great places we love to eat at so that we could re-visit some of our favourite holes before we disappear for good.

All sounds good so far I hear you say, where does the "rant" come into this? Well here it comes...

This is a tale about eating establishments being at the pinnacle of the lunchtime culinary trade and then suddenly tumbling down below the lowest of the low without much warning.

Oriental Views Chinese restaurant on Old Christchurch rd in Bournemouth is my first hit. An establishment once steeped in glory and myth due to it's fantastic lunchtime £5 deals. A place where we would regularly overeat due to the massively oversized portions, yet we were never let down by quality... until recently that is. Our favourite "hot and sour soup" has turned from a glorious bowl of surprisingly hot spices and marvelous meats into a steaming congealed bowl of something that smells like liquidised wet chihuahua.

The disappointment doesn't end there, no. Main courses which were always such a treat are now reduced to a choice of meat covered in Chinese "sauce", nay not covered in but swimming in.

The Chinese tea is still a winner though, and I'm not sure how they could get that wrong anyway.

"Peckers" greasy spoon is next on the list of eateries that really grind my gears.

Peckers opened up about a year ago and when we first visited we were completely amazed. It looks like you average greasy spoon yet the quality of the food in there is impeccable, and at transport cafe prices too. We loved this place, for price and quality you can't beat it.

Recently however things have started to slip. We apply the "3 strikes and you're out" rule to everywhere we eat, it's only fair, get it wrong 3 times and we never step over the threshold again.

Here are Peckers 3 strikes.

Strike 1: No Peckers Burgers. Peckers Burgers (tm) are incredible, 2 decks, loads of extras, chips, a veritbale plate-full, you can barely eat them without embarassing yourself. On this occasion 4 people wanted them, only one got it - bear in mind this was at 12:30, who sells out before 12:30?

Strike 2: Peckers Burgers, nothing else. 12:30pm again, nothing left, at all, not a sausage - quite literally. We could get Peckers Burgers though, but nobody wanted them this time.

Strike 3: Everyone orders Peckers Burgers only to be told after waiting for 5 mins that they only had enough for one again. Even worse The Gorv had tried to order a jacket potato only to be told they didn't have any, so he ordered a Peckers Burger instead only to be told 5 mins later he couldn't have it. I decided to have something cheaper on the menu, chips and chilli (even that was rubbish), and it was another chore trying to get the £2 back that I'd overpaid by. In the end the money came direct from another paying customer, instead of putting it through the till. Outrageous.

We are good, regular customers who deserve better. Now we are getting better elsewhere.

Idiots.