We don’t like change
My Siciliana pizza arrived with three artichoke slices missing last night. Three artichoke slices, two anchovy fillets and a chunk of mozzarella missing to be precise. I know this because I am a creature of obsessional habits and when I get accustomed to a thing, I tend to get neurotically accustomed to it.
When the number of artichoke slices on my pizza suddenly decreases I get a tight feeling in my chest, which is so alarming I have to go to the loo and do breathing exercises. The disappearance of the artichokes might seem like a simple oversight on the part of Pizza Express, were it not for the fact that a few weeks ago my Fine Burger arrived half missing and sporting a tiny bowl of chips and a minuscule salad which barely hid its blushes.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ I asked my companion, rooting around the plate with my fork as if by lifting up bits of garnish I might discover a part of my meal which the chef had cunningly hidden to amuse himself on a slow evening.
We searched quite thoroughly and found nothing. Even the gherkins, or dill pickles as they like to call them nowadays, had weirdly disappeared. Instead of a brimming bowlful we were presented with two slices of a gherkin. I mean, not even an entire gherkin. When we complained we were assured that if we had come for dinner a few hours earlier we could have had two burgers for the price of one. But we didn’t want two small burgers for the price of one at 5 p.m., we wanted two normal-sized burgers for the normal price of two normal-sized burgers at our normal dining time of 7.30
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