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Cocktails that Chris Morris and Nathan Barley would approve of:

I don't eat fish, but that looks to me like just 'bits', as we used to call them, one slightly squashed pea, and a fish shaped bit of wood to stand in for what should be the main point of the dish in the first place.
yes, and is that salami and raspberry vinegar close by?
 
No matter how hard I try to imagine what reimagined bangers and mash might be like, I can't.
Bangers and mash was reimagined over a decade ago. I recall my girlf was served mini cocktail sausages with the middle scooped out and mash piped in. Fortunately it washed down by bucket loads of (free) champagne in proper flutes.
 
Of course everyone can afford stuff like this, it just amuses some people to pretend otherwise.

Or maybe selling selfconsciously wacky designer twat refreshments at £10 a throw in very deprived parts of the country is a cunt's trick, especially when you're not paying your staff enough to make their rent never mind actually drink the drinks they sell all day.

Not really, young people wouldn't be able to afford this stuff.

really?


are pubs opposite housing estates also offensive? if we say a cheapish london pint is £3.50... that's half the price of a mid-priced london cocktail - or a cheaper one in a trendier place (notwithstanding half-price happy hours, two-for-ones etc). Now, if we accept that part of the reason for drinking out is not units of alcohol per pound sterling, but the social event - the experience - the getting-out-of-the-house - the sense of a bit of an affordable treat... Then is it really so fucking unaffordable or offensive to go for cocktails half as often as someone might go to the pub?

I don't like pubs. I've been on benefits and i've been a skint student... and i've occasionally chosen to spunk cash i could ill-afford on cocktails because that's what I like. Ever since i was an underage drinker. I like the theatre and the presentation - it feels exciting and worth spending that ill-afforded money on. And it's ok that you don't feel that way, but it doesn't mean that all the people who like cocktails and choose to spend their money on them are wrong and posh and stupid. Go out in the towns of the uk and see who goes to the cocktail bars: hen nights, "girls' nights out"... lots of working class people - predominantly women - paying £6 and £7 a go, for cocktails. And if the demographic in the bars you're talking about seems more middle class, it is reflective of the local area. London *has* more higher earners... but the clientele of even the poncy cocktail bars is still significantly working class - and considering how much more time i spend in these places than, one can only presume, the sneering brigade do... perhaps i have a broader sample to base my understanding upon.
 
are pubs opposite housing estates also offensive? if we say a cheapish london pint is £3.50... that's half the price of a mid-priced london cocktail - or a cheaper one in a trendier place (notwithstanding half-price happy hours, two-for-ones etc). Now, if we accept that part of the reason for drinking out is not units of alcohol per pound sterling, but the social event - the experience - the getting-out-of-the-house - the sense of a bit of an affordable treat... Then is it really so fucking unaffordable or offensive to go for cocktails half as often as someone might go to the pub?
If you can afford it and don't mind restricting yourself to, say, two cocktails (budget: £15-£20), I'm sure it's a lovely treat if you like to sit around in these kind of places. Bit difficult to make two small drinks last more than an hour though, and if you want a snack to go with it, prices go even higher.
...but the clientele of even the poncy cocktail bars is still significantly working class
I really don't think the clientèle of the place opposite me is 'significantly working class' and there's nothing in their advertising that suggests that's the crowd they're hoping to attract.

I don't know a single soul from my estate who has been there.
 
really?


are pubs opposite housing estates also offensive? if we say a cheapish london pint is £3.50... that's half the price of a mid-priced london cocktail - or a cheaper one in a trendier place (notwithstanding half-price happy hours, two-for-ones etc). Now, if we accept that part of the reason for drinking out is not units of alcohol per pound sterling, but the social event - the experience - the getting-out-of-the-house - the sense of a bit of an affordable treat... Then is it really so fucking unaffordable or offensive to go for cocktails half as often as someone might go to the pub?

I don't like pubs. I've been on benefits and i've been a skint student... and i've occasionally chosen to spunk cash i could ill-afford on cocktails because that's what I like. Ever since i was an underage drinker. I like the theatre and the presentation - it feels exciting and worth spending that ill-afforded money on. And it's ok that you don't feel that way, but it doesn't mean that all the people who like cocktails and choose to spend their money on them are wrong and posh and stupid. Go out in the towns of the uk and see who goes to the cocktail bars: hen nights, "girls' nights out"... lots of working class people - predominantly women - paying £6 and £7 a go, for cocktails. And if the demographic in the bars you're talking about seems more middle class, it is reflective of the local area. London *has* more higher earners... but the clientele of even the poncy cocktail bars is still significantly working class - and considering how much more time i spend in these places than, one can only presume, the sneering brigade do... perhaps i have a broader sample to base my understanding upon.

all of which is great, but isn't quite : "Of course everyone can afford stuff like this, it just amuses some people to pretend otherwise."
 
all of which is great, but isn't quite : "Of course everyone can afford stuff like this, it just amuses some people to pretend otherwise."
but y'know - some people are on the absolute bones of their arses - and can't afford the pub either. drinking out is a luxury - whichever way you slice it.

But if you have any disposable income at all, you make choices about how you spend it. you can spend your money in the pub, or you can spend it less often on things that cost more money. and that's fine. surely that's fine? And people do.

It's just like the slagging off of "benefits-but-still-have-a-sky-subscription-brigade" - people go without some things to pay for other things they value - and people value different things. attacking inessential things for being more expensive than other inessential things just massively misses the point of why we buy inessential things in the first place.

There's a lot to be angry about with what's happening to force the poor out of london - but banging on about the cost of cocktails is a massive sideshow. if you can buy a couple of pints, you can buy a cocktail. if you can buy four pints once a week, you can buy four cocktails once a fortnight - the actual cost of things is not the point, and banging on about is as if it is, risks undermining the relevant issues surrounding the social cleansing of london.
 
If someone has limited disposable income but can allow themselves to have the odd alcoholic drink, then the affordability gap between a cocktail bar and any other licensed venue in Brixton is minimal. I have no doubt the cocktail bar in question will be unaffordable to some, but then just about every other licensed premises in Brixton will be too.
 
do people not like the bar because

1
poor people don't, won't or can't drink there or

2 because it makes brixton less the place they used to love and used to love living in?

in other words, instead of being concerned about where poor people do or don't or can and cant drink, is it really more about the want for brixton to stay how it was, (what ever that was). if it's number 1, there's millions of shops in london to get angry over.
 
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do people not like the bar because

1
poor people don't, won't or can't drink there or

2 because it makes brixton less the place they used to love and used to love living in?

in other words, instead of being concerned about where poor people do or don't or can and cant drink, is it really more about the want for brixton to stay how it was, (what ever that was). if it's number 1, there's millions of shops in london to get angry over.

Oh, here we go: the old anyone who opposes arrant twattery is an inveterate "enemy of change" argument. :(
 
Bangers and mash was reimagined over a decade ago. I recall my girlf was served mini cocktail sausages with the middle scooped out and mash piped in. Fortunately it washed down by bucket loads of (free) champagne in proper flutes.

What, the mash into the sausages?

Makes me think of that Mike Lee film, the one with Timothy Spool. High Hopes, nuvo quacine (sp) spam and jam...
 
It's just like the slagging off of "benefits-but-still-have-a-sky-subscription-brigade" - people go without some things to pay for other things they value - and people value different things. attacking inessential things for being more expensive than other inessential things just massively misses the point of why we buy inessential things in the first place.

This.

Threads like this on here always make me grin. There's an entire forum dedicated to folk who spend large portions of their money on cocaine and other drugs with little or no negative comment, but spending a few quid on fancy cocktails or expensive restaurants means it's sneery, sneery, "Nathan Barley" time! :hmm: :D
 
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on a related note, I'm thinking of taking up Voga, just started up in Mr Barleys backyard, Haggerston :

https://billetto.co.uk/events/67944

"Do you love yoga, but secretly wish it was more upbeat? Or perhaps you've always been inspired by 'vogueing' (circa 1980s New York) but it's a bit out-there for you?"
 
Anyone who drinks anything other than petrol is bourgeois metropolitan scum.

Even then, unless you're siphoning it straight from your truck with a length of hose you're a pretentious wanker.

And don't even get me started on 'unleaded', you bunch of fairies :mad:
Reminds me of the "petrol cahacas" I drank in Portugal. €5 per litre didn't leave room for any fancy stuff like a multicoloured label.
 
This hot water bottle cocktail pushed me over the edge

peak-hipster-douchebag.jpg


Peak hipster artisan douchnozzlery achieved in London with the hot water bottle cocktail
 
This.

Threads like this on here always make me grin. There's an entire forum dedicated to folk who spend large portions of their money on cocaine and other drugs with little or no negative comment, but spending a few quid on fancy cocktails or expensive restaurants means it's sneery, sneery, "Nathan Barley" time! :hmm: :D

It's not that, it's just you can have a nice cocktail and make the presentation of it look nice without resorting to daft gimmicks. Same with food. You could serve a drink in something that wasn't a glass if it really worked, just as you don't have to serve food on a plate. The problem is that it's just generally done thoughtlessly and with random, unsuitable objects.

If it doesn't look good and doesn't taste good, it's not very good.

Bet that water bottle makes the drink reek of rubber too.
 
editor, you know the non-epicurian reason I was hinting at was 'getting in the papers and/or getting people to post about it on the internet' don't you?
 
editor, you know the non-epicurian reason I was hinting at was 'getting in the papers and/or getting people to post about it on the internet' don't you?
I don't think their intention is to have people rip the fuck out of them for their douchenozzlery though. Not that I'm really sure what a 'non-epicurian reason' is, tbh.
 
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