Winning Masterchef does not give you the right to confuse me with spoons, Thomasina Myers.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, so my Significant Otter and I dragged our arses away from the X Files for an evening and went out for Romance. We’re pretty good at Romance. We have it down to a tee. It usually goes something like this:

ME: Oh. You ate half my waffle.
HIM: Yes, but I didn’t eat all of it. ROMANCE!

It’s like being in a Richard Curtis movie sometimes.

So, last night we went out to see The Princess Bride at the Prince Charles Cinema (which is ace, if you haven’t been there, go. They’re showing Flashdance on 4^th March. Go then. ).

But before that we went to Wahaca in Soho for some Mexican food.

Wahaca is weird. In many ways.

The food is good. There’s nothing wrong with the food. But...well....

When you get there, they ask you if you have been there before. DO NOT SAY NO. If you say no, this happens:

“Welcome to Wahaca. My name is Meg” [writes ‘Meg’ in big letters on your paper menu thing, in case you forget, or wondered how it was spelled]

"This is the menu. This ‘Drinks and Nibbles’ section has all our drinks and nibbles. The main courses are here, where it says ‘Mains’, and sides are over here. Under ‘sides’....” This goes on for about 5 minutes.

I’ve never understood places that do this. "Ah, you’ve never been here before? Then you must be completely unaware of the concept of a menu, here’s how it works..."

Later, she brings some salsa to the table. “This is salsa. It goes with your food.” Does it? Good. Glad you pointed that out, I was just about to pour it into my beer. “This sauce is HOT. Don’t eat this one unless you like HOT sauce because it is HOT”.

Oh good. I’m glad you flagged that up:

*sigh*

For pudding I had cheesecake with hibiscus syrup. They love hibiscus at Wahaca, it’s in everything. They also put hibiscus flowers on top of everything, even though, unless they’re opening elegantly in the bottom of a champagne glass, they actually look like some sort of dried insect made of suede. The SO had ‘Flan de Casa’ (crème caramel, to you. Cold custard, to me).

All very nice indeed.

BUT. They make you eat it with a bright pink plastic baby spoon. I kid you not, look:

It’s not even got a concave bowl. It’s basically a spatula. A pink plastic spatula. You try eating crème caramel with a spatula. It’s not easy. It is very funny, but it’s not easy. For a moment I wondered whether the waitress had just seen my dinosaur bag and made a judgement call on my mental capacity but no, everyone else was using toddler cutlery too.

And then there’s the toilets.

To start with, the entire wall into the toilets is glass. I hate glass walls in pubs and restaurants. Mostly because when I am in these establishments I am likely to be drunk for at least a portion of the evening. The drunken fly-against-a-window dance is not a good look.

Anyway, once you get in there are four doors with a picture of a woman on (fine), and three with a picture of a man (we understand this). Then there is one with a picture of a woman dragging a man by his tie. I mean, what? You’re with me, right? Is this the shagging loo? Don’t get it.

There’s also a MASSIVE tiled arrangement in the middle of the room that could be a) a sink, b) a urinal or c) the Diana Memorial Fountain. At least two of these things should never be confused with each other.

So, yeah. Wahaca is just plain odd. Or possibly I'm not hip enough to understand it.

The Princess Bride was ace though.