"I would recommend that everyone eat at Dalston Jazz bar for the simple reason that every terrible restaurant you visit throughout the rest of your life will seem better by comparison. We walked in and were confronted with a decor that was presumably aiming for shabby chic but had instead landed squarely on skanky tetanus. We took a table at the back after being told that the one free at the front was reserved. Fair enough. We then splashed out the eminently reasonable price of £32 for 2 pints, a single vodka and (flat) coke and a cosmopolitan so sweet I can only assume they got the cranberry juice mixed up with the Vimto. For some reason all drinks had to be paid for immediately rather than being added to your bill presumably because so many people walk out. Words cannot describe the quality of our waiter at least not words I can write here. When he eventually took our food order he explained that it was a 'pay what you want ' restaurant, before immediately contradicting himself by informing us that each dish held a minimum 'donation ' of £15. What about the foccaccia? I dared to ask. £15 I was informed. Deciding to forgo the world 's most expensive bread we went for the prawns. They had the taste and texture of rubber covered in warm sweet chilli sauce. The chef had taken the unusual step of placing these on top of the crispy salad leaves, making them somewhat less crispy. The accompanying dish of a 'fishcake ' was, in reality, a pile of overcooked mash stuffed with the sweepings of the kitchen, some of which were presumably piscine in nature. The night culminated when the waiter, despite our protests, insisted we move to the long table he had originally said was reserved. Apparently the people who had booked it had cancelled, but our table was reserved (something he hadn 't previously mentioned). We arrived at the already packed long table to find there were only 2 seats for the 4 of us. No problem for our suddenly industrious waiter, who made everyone else shove along until we were so packed that the meaning of an 'intimate dinner ' threatened to take on a whole new meaning."
