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Song Que Cafe


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I should have known. Once that poltroon Dimmond enthused about this new( ish ) Vietnamese cafe on the kingsland rd, it was bound to be pretty ordinary. Let us not forget, this is a man who thought Trois Garcon was wonderful. Ahem

We tried Song Que for supper tonight and while it was not actively disgusting it was as close as I have got to it in the Vietnamese strip

The length of the menu and the listing of some interesting looking dishes gave us hope for a good experience and our first orders of soft shell crab and sugar cane prawns were up to scratch, piping hot and fresh. The next two dishes though were a major disappointment. Fried mussels in a tamarind sauce was remarkable in that the sauce smothered most of the flavour but could not disguise the fishiness of the mussels. I write this at night. If I don't post in the morning, they were off and I am dying.

Another starter of Green Papaya with chilled pork and prawns was much lauded by Dimmond, but it was beyong bland. It lacked any zing and I am convinced that it had been sitting around for a while

Mains of a Pho which supposedly had sliced rare beef, tripe and tendon was based on an excellent stock but there were only the merest slivers of god's good tripe and no rare meat to be seen. Again it lacked any sort of freshness and clean taste. It came with a side dish of Ong Choy with garlic. This had not been drained properly and sat in a sludge of grey water. Quite nasty.

A final dish was eels in a spicy curry sauce. Again not great.

The bill for two with a beer, tea and mineral water was £41 including a service charge which was well deserved as the waiters seem friendly and attentive.

My overiding impression was of ham fisted cooking of not great ingredients served in a alarmingly green room while listening to Mantovani

I will leave it to Dimmond

3/10

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Well, well, well. They say the net is a small place. There can be only one Simon Majumdar!

That sounds exactly like the food in the school dining room at Oakwood, minus of course the mussels, prawns, soft shell crab.

Who could ever forget the stench of gristle stewing gently in packet gravy, lovingly served up by an old battleaxe in a pink bri nylon smock. Happy days eh!

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Well, well, well. They say the net is a small place. There can be only one Simon Majumdar!

That sounds exactly like the food in the school dining room at Oakwood, minus of course the mussels, prawns, soft shell crab.

Who could ever forget the stench of  gristle stewing gently in packet gravy, lovingly served up by an old battleaxe in a pink bri nylon smock. Happy days eh!

Go on then, give me a clue. Which one of the people I came down South to get away from are you?

S

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...sliced rare beef, tripe and tendon...eels in a spicy curry sauce..."

Sorry to hear it ! I was really looking forward to trying this place.

But...you've left out the most critical details of your evening. How was your date !??! Whether or not you end up walking hand-in-hand into the sunset, a girl who will eat rare beef, tendon, eels and tripe sounds like the girl for you...or did she just eat the noodles, prawns and tamarind sauce? :smile:

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I would be tempted to clarify whether Simon's date was animal, vegetable or mineral before worrying about something as specific as gender.

It's all true... I admit to being the MD of Holden Media, organisers of the Northern Restaurant and Bar exhibition, the Northern Hospitality Awards and other Northern based events too numerous to mention.

I don't post here as frequently as I once did, but to hear me regularly rambling on about bollocks - much of it food and restaurant-related - in a bite-size fashion then add me on twitter as "thomhetheringto".

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Sorry to disappoint you all but the lady in question turned out to be a damp squib and cancelled. Some pathetic excuse about a sick mother or something similar.

In the end it was another evening of dining disaster for the Majumdar Bros.

However, your concern for my faltering love life is heartening.

S

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Well, well, well. They say the net is a small place. There can be only one Simon Majumdar!

That sounds exactly like the food in the school dining room at Oakwood, minus of course the mussels, prawns, soft shell crab.

Who could ever forget the stench of  gristle stewing gently in packet gravy, lovingly served up by an old battleaxe in a pink bri nylon smock. Happy days eh!

Go on then, give me a clue. Which one of the people I came down South to get away from are you?

Now there's a line you don't often get to hear on Friends Reunited.

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Here's another couple of lines you might not find on 'friends reunited' either.

I can see that Simon is still the self opinionated, pompous twat he was at school. As for who he went south to avoid, no names no pack drill for a sad tosser like you, I also moved south to avoid having to live with a steaming herd of human effluence and found it was just as bad down there, only down south it is rich pompous human effluence.

Is it any wonder he was beaten senseless on a daily basis and was easily the most reviled boy in school. Even the aforementioned pink smocked dinner ladies turned a blind eye to yet another shoeing. Forget about stabbing needles in your own eyes Simon concentrate on removing the daggers in your back from the people who were waving you off.

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This will end in tears, I just know it.

Tyke, can I ask you to read the user agreement for this site which is right here, especially the bit where it says "You agree not to post messages that you know or suspect to be defamatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or violative of any law. "

I think your message manages to breach nearly every part of the agreement, except for the bit about violating the law, so I would ask you to take a deep breath before you post again.

Ta ever so.

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Now, you see, Simon can get away with rudeness because it's usually witty and ever so slightly self-deconstructing. It's always a mistake trying to put down people who have that particular talent, because it just comes out, well ... a bit wince-making.

Simon: according to another post he's a chef. You may want to ascertain where ...

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Here's another couple of lines you might not find on 'friends reunited' either.

I can see that Simon is still the self opinionated, pompous twat he was at school. As for who he went south to avoid, no names no pack drill for a sad tosser like you, I also moved south to avoid having to live with a steaming herd of human effluence and found it was just as bad down there, only down south it is rich pompous human effluence.

Is it any wonder he was beaten senseless on a daily basis and  was easily the most reviled boy in school. Even the aforementioned pink smocked dinner ladies turned a blind eye to yet another shoeing. Forget about stabbing needles in your own eyes Simon concentrate on removing the daggers in your back from the people who were waving you off.

As I am prepared to dish it out, I guess I should be prepared to take it.

Shame that

a) You are not prepared to tell me who you are

b) You are still worried about things that happened oh, what was it 22 years ago.

I have sent you a PM. If you really want to have a go at me let's keep it off the board so we don't spoil the fun for all the others.

Oh and I can think of at least four others who were more reviled than me. Like me though they were all asian. That's the kind of place Rotherham was, and from your post, still is

S

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So people, in two posts I am accused of being racist, rude, threatening, obsessed and many other things.

For the record I am neither interested, obsessed, or worried with what happened 25 yrs ago at what must be said a very run of the mill comprehensive school.

I am not in any way racist and take it from me if you bothered to read my post fully you would see there is no inference of it at all.

Does this mean I will not make the invite list for the next dim sum soiree?

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"You agree not to post messages that you know or suspect to be defamatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or violative of any law. "

I never noticed that bit about no "sexually oriented" posts. How'd that slip in there?

Tyke, that's a bit of a short fuse you've got. Have you met Dr. Revenue?

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PM apology received, however what really interests me is what did you really think the response to a comment like that would be?

Ever the conciliator that's me.

Perhaps something not quite so revisionist. Now I have had time to think about it, I can think of at least 10 people who got beaten up at our rather battered old school more than me and that is not including the teachers

I suspect that you, like all those others, were just jealous of the rather sporty Zapata moustache I wore from the age of 11.

S

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