Sunday, October 9, 2011

Tiki Taster - Pacific Social Club

When winter arrives, & London turns it's lights down, it becomes one fuck of a dreary place. The sky turns to stone, the grey expanse of tenement houses & asphalt roads all unite in drab homogeny. Grey, dark, dark, grey. Just as you're giving oral sex to a shotgun, ready to paint the skyline with your own grey matter, you remember that other people have been feeling the same way in this city for centuries, & that some have had the initiative to craft escape-pods, incubators & time machines to hide from the oppressive dark seasons. Nestled in a Hackney side street, I found my own little parallel world to escape the London doldrums. Pacific Social Club is an all in one incubator/time machine/escape pod. Stepping into this little cafe, father-time's whip was suddenly too short to reach my back, I felt calm away from the hustle & bustle, I was at ease amongst the colourful bunting, 78-sleeve wallpaper, pacific island tiki carvings, wood panel transistor radios, the LP player wooing me with it's warm analogue patter, the gentle clatter of antique cups & saucers, straight out of a time-warp. This felt like home, & I didn't want to leave.

Now it's all very well & good having a carefully crafted aesthetic, but it can easily look trite or hackneyed (double-entendre) in an age where "vintage" is the old new. This place not only brims with authenticity, but it has two other key ingredients which really give it the trifecta: friendly staff, & most importantly, great food. I was fairly ravenous when I arrived, as I hadn't had breakfast or lunch, & it was already 1pm. I settled in to the Venezuelan sandwich with chorizo, beans, avocado & cheese. This toasted treat was so packed with flavour, I had to curse Jesus aloud. Once my savoury craving was satisfied, I whet my appetite on the carrot cake with cream cheese icing (it might have had cinnamon on the icing, I think?), to be honest I was still so blinded by the afterglow of that toastie, that I could've been spooning dogshit into my gob & still been happy, but nah, the carrot cake was actually great too. In the word of California's former Governor, I'll be back...Pacific Social Club...

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