Destino

Last night I hooked up with Baksheesh and Miseryguts in Destino. This used to be Down Mexico Way, an old haunt of ours - not quite the Titty Twister, but a south-of-the-border bar-restaurant that was just seedy enough to be authentic.

This was also the place that Christofer once famously threatened the staff with the Trades Descriptions Act when they served up a ceviche that didn't seem to look anything like what a ceviche in a place called Down Mexico Way ought to look like. When the Serbian waiter just glowered at him he called for the manager, who attempted to patronise him into submission. Never a smart move. Next up - the chef in full regalia, a passionate Venezuelan who delivered a moving little speech in hyperventilated Spanish about how he had discovered this particular recipe for ceviche in an isolated Ecuadorian coastal village, followed by a concise history of the etymology of the term ceviche, and concluding with a few bullet points on why he should be allowed some artistic license. Needless to say he was soon back in the kitchen preparing a proper ceviche. No maaaames cabrón!

By the way, V's cousin Hugo is the ceviche entrepreneur of Antigua, Guatemala. During a brief exile in los estados unidos he learned how to combine a simple, standardised fast food product with smart branding. Thus was born Hugo's Ceviches, for many years served by Hugo and his t-shirted crew from a pick-up parked beside the Calzada, but now also available from a proper sit-down diner at the kitschy little Texaco gas station opposite the Radisson (not actually part of said chain any longer, but the name has stuck.)

On Thursday night Baksheesh and I had time for a couple of cocktails before MG showed up. First some Caipirinhas that contained more crushed ice than a Slush Puppy then a pair of Margaritas that had the colour and consistency of our swimming pool when the chlorine is running a bit low!

That these cost £6.50 is symptomatic of the unfortunate makeover that this place has had. As something of an expert of the hacienda style and its key components, hand-painted tiles, wrought-iron balconies et al., I can only praise the architect responsible for the original re-fit - completed in 1926 when the first Spanish restaurant outside of Iberia opened on this site in Swallow Street . (The work was commissioned by the soon-to-be-deposed King of Spain.) But now there are joss sticks in the bogs and the staff are dressed like disciples of Dr No.

Most sorely missed is the disco. This was one of the few places in London you could actually imagine that you were on holiday. There were gangs of dusky Ecuadorian ladies (probably from the same village as that ceviche) dancing around their handbags, while the outer rim of the dance floor was prowled by shiny-shirted opportunists craning their necks like meerkats. Tourists, office workers, office cleaners...all swaying to a Macarena-Merengue kind of mix. The kind of place that made you feel a bit like you've scored just by being there. Now there's no dance floor, just a 'DJ' in a box in the bar area wearing a Craig David tea-cosy and headphones spinning the sort of anodyne trippy muzak that makes you wish you'd brought your own iPod. ('Craig' probably just plugs in his own one anyway.) The crowd around us were the precisely the featureless urbanites you'd expect to be listening to this electro-dross while drinking Sloshed Puppies. The illusion of displacement has gone - there's only on place you could be...London.

Salsa! with its shabby crowd of on-the-make Brazilians (the kind of people that give 'eclectic' a bad name) is sadly no substitute...and even that smelly dive will probably get the Conran treatment in the end.

MG is back in London after a comparatively brief six month disappearance. This time he was holed up in Gibraltar sailing up and down the coast either side of the Pillars of Hercules. He reported having just rented out his gaff in the Swiss alps to a former England footballer and his "bit on the side". I could certainly improve my Google ranking a bit by naming and shaming this individual, but I think I'd better stick to gags about Argies and anal sex, don't you?

Anyway, Baksheesh widened our eyes with the telling of his plans for an Autumn wedding. In Switzerland both of the betrothed are obliged to fill out a form in which they must describe the precise circumstances of their first meeting. This time though he's done his homework right - the future Madame Baksheesh is his bank manager and they met in her place of employment in Geneva. He couldn't stay long on Thursday- he had to trot off to the Colony Club to meet up with one of his flakier clients - a man that draws a fine ethical distinction between smuggling and contraband.

Afterwards MG and I had a bite at Chowki. I've been meaning to try this place out for ages, and I'd certainly recommend it now, though it's not really the sort of Indian restaurant you ought to go to when you're a bit lagered up.