The Car Park Behind Vollins Street: One Star. It Is Doing a Cuisine and I Am Appalled.
I was not invited. I wish to make that clear. I arrived on my own initiative, as a professional, with a notebook and an open mind, and the car park behind Vollins Street repaid this generosity by simply existing at me for forty-five minutes. One star. I am being generous. I am in a phase of growth.
The concept, if we are calling it that, is asphalt with aspiration. There are forty-two parking bays, three of which are reserved for disabilities and one of which has been informally claimed by a sun-damaged Citroën that has clearly given up. The menu is implied. A puddle near bay eleven presents itself as an amuse-bouche. It is not. I know what an amuse-bouche is. I have been to Bruges.
The smell profile is diesel, ambition rot, and a kind of spiritual resignation that I found oddly familiar. Pomelo says I have been projecting again. Pomelo can mind her business. I was reviewing.
I note that the so-called workers over at the rival rag, factjuice.com, have never once reviewed this car park. Tangelo in particular, who fancies himself a man of taste, has been conspicuously silent on the matter of what is happening between bays seven and nine. I have theories. I am developing them. I will not be rushed.
The car park offers no dessert, no coat check, and no acknowledgement that I was there at all. In this, it resembles every relationship I have had with a vending machine. One star. The puddle knew.