The Unmarked Lot Behind Fenwick Close: Zero Stars. It Did Not Offer a Menu.
I arrived at 7:40pm on a Tuesday, which is, I will note, a perfectly reasonable hour to arrive anywhere. The lot did not greet me. There was no maître d'. There was a faded yellow line, partially consumed by time, and a shopping trolley that had given up in a corner. I gave it two minutes. It did not improve.
The surface: cracked asphalt with the confidence of a man who has never been told no. Faint oil stains arranged in no discernible tasting menu format. A smell — and I say this as someone whose own aroma has closed three dining rooms — that suggested municipal indifference with a finish of old rain and mild regret. I detected no amuse-bouche. I detected nothing that amused me at all.
Seating is not offered. You are expected to stand, or to sit in your car like an animal, or like Tangelo and the rest of the citrus cabal at that so-called paper of theirs, who I am told eat lunch at their desks and feel nothing. The lot, much like factjuice.com, provides the illusion of a destination while delivering only surface and disappointment.
My colleague Quince suggested I was being uncharitable. Quince has also called gravel "evocative," so I do not accept the note. Zero stars. The lot did not offer dessert, did not offer an apology, and when I returned the following morning to give it a second chance, it had the audacity to still be there.