Al-Sultan Restaurant | 1813 Douglas Street | Victoria

In the bottom drawer of my desk, tucked behind the Emergency Whiskey and a stack of unopened fan mail, there sits a book. Large and lovingly bound in exquisite leather, it is a comprehensive list of the things in this world which annoy me. Some of the entries are more detailed than others, the most thought-out being calmly expanded upon in iambic pentameter using my finest calligraphy set:

"Pompous weird-beards who mope their way around
parties until someone says, 'Is that your
guitar?' and they look shocked, almost as if
to say, 'Oh this, this vast wooden thing slung
across my back that hits Bren in the arm
each time I walk past him? I had almost
forgotten that I had it with me, bro',
then play the first four bars to 'Stairway' while
all the other moonheads gaze on rapt and
the rest of us remember that we have
work in the morning and must be leaving."

Others are hastily scrawled in a pygmy rage using half-chewed golf pencils and considerably more four-letter words. These typically involve things that bother me about work, whatever slang is currently en vogue and things I see on television. Television is a scourge, particularly the advertisements, and several pages of my manifesto are devoted entirely to things like:

"Slap Chop Man: I wish that hooker had bitten off your tongue"

"Viagra: There is nothing at all wrong with your penis. It has retired from active service because it understands you to be too ugly to attract a partner the old-fashioned way and your income stream insufficient to acquire one via the same means as Slap Chop Man."

"Billy Mays: That God took you and not Anthony Sullivan or Slap Chop Man proves that He takes some kind of demented joy in our suffering."

Earls | 1199 Government Street | Victoria

There are a lot of reasons why it might seem pointless to review a chain restaurant:  the recipes are mostly the same at every location from San Francisco to Jacksonville, and, as a friend pointed out, if a formula is successful enough to generate franchises who am I to argue?  Well, over the years I've eaten at Boston Pizza, Red Robin & Ricky's All-Day Grill, and the only thing they do well is back up what H.L. Mencken said about getting rich by underestimating the taste of the American public.  The quality of a restaurant depends more on the competence of those preparing the food than it does on recipes alone so if the folks behind the scenes have as much enthusiasm for food as I do honest work then your dining experience will be as much fun as mopping the floors in an adult theatre. 

Almost any franchise that opened up in my hometown of Revelstoke over the years has either folded or maintained a consistently execrable standard, the only obvious reason being the available pool of listless halfwits willing to work for the wages on offer.  Paying peanuts will most assuredly get you monkeys.  Dan has always been a devoted fan of the Earls chain, for which I've hassled him endlessly but his ability to ignore me is almost unparalleled.  Only my wife does it better.  So when Dan informed me that Earls would be the chosen venue for his 26th birthday I figured there was no point poking fun and that inferior factory-prepared food would vindicate my snobbery.  And you know what?  The bastards made us a great meal and I barely had enough room left to eat my words.

I Want to Take His Face - Off!

A quick word before I post this week's review - I'd like to thank my good friend Dan Eastabrook for putting together our new logo.  The original shot was taken by another good friend, Scott Horton, while we were on vacation in southern California and Dan kindly took the time to doctor the image according to my needs.  That included removing an awful reflection of myself, which is sitting in an attic somewhere growing older.  Thanks again to both of you!