A surreal Nepalese meal (London)

 

(This blog is inspired by a recent conversation with old friend Chris Dillon who mentioned that he used to go to these restaurants in the 80s.  I’m sharing the nostalgia as some of the readers might recognise them.)

There were two Nepalese restaurants on the stretch of Euston Road by Warren Street Tube station.

    My Heart of the Dragon* office on Fitzroy Square was round the corner, which was how I came across them.

    I later discovered that both the little one and the bigger one (called सगर माथा Sagarmāthā / “sky head” / meaning “the head in the great blue sky” in Nepali) shared the same owner — a gentle and genial chap calling himself David (which I suspect is for Davendra / Davindra).

    The food was nice, the service even better:  from the waiters, the cook and the proprietor.  They made one feel so welcome, which is how it should be anyway, as you’re giving them business.  (Not everyone thinks that way, though, in my and other people’s experience of being at the receiving end of the inexplicable rudeness from some of the staff at ethnic supermarkets.)

    David the Nepalese restaurant proprietor would ply between the two restaurants throughout the day, just to look in on how things were going.  If he found me there, he’d always make a point of staying until my order was ready, then serve it to me in person.  How special does that make a customer feel, I ask you?  (I didn’t get the feeling that he was doing it just for the sake of his own business.  He came across as a genuinely nice person, and sincerely pleased to see me.  Ditto the rest of the staff.)

    I’d go to these two restaurants with friends and colleagues, sometimes in a big group.

    It once amounted to 17 people, including me.  Tables were put together in a low row, four per table, with one end left free for the waiters to serve the head of the table from, and the other end against the back wall was taken up by me.

    At one point early on in the meal, one of the waiters came up to me and asked me to read his palm.  I didn’t remember telling him I could read palms (only rudimentary, though, taught by my eldest sister who features in two of the Interpreting dreams series).  Anyway, it was just a bit of fun, so I read his palm.  

    He was pleased with what I had to say, and came back with a half pint of free beer.  Another waiter then asked me to read his palm (for which I got another half pint of beer), with two others waiting in the queue!

    I was glad they only had four waiters in that restaurant (with about 12 tables), or I’d be there all night reading palms (and quaffing free beers).

(London, 1983)

*The Heart of the Dragon:  Channel 4 TV’s 12-part documentary series on China, first aired in January 1984 to inaugurate the launch of the nascent station (alongside two other sister series:  The Arabs, and The Russians; we were to be called The Chinese, but a Canadian team finished their six-part series, with the same name, ahead of us, so we had to change our name).