Thursday, June 2

Food: Fatburger Click for more info

The thing is that Fatburger is actually kind of different. It's more basic than some of the usual joints (Stax and Proper being the benchmarks really) with a flat menu and a "pay before you eat" queue at the till. I guess that places it somewhere around the Nando's level of service. You'd think that this would manifest itself in the price, but no - I left Fatburger after having paid a colossal £17.50 for a meal, albeit with a milkshake.

Okay so it's pricey - surely the food justifies the cost? Well no. The meat wasn't actually too bad, but the burger itself was bland; confusingly there were no variants in the menu either. The fries were hard, and possibly stale, while the chicken wings must have come from a really small chicken. All in all it was pretty disappointing really.

So yes different from what I'm used to... but alas not in any positive way. Faced with competition that makes burgers look easy unfortunately Fatburger is one to avoid.

Wednesday, June 1

Book: New Spring, Robert Jordan Click for more info

New Spring is a welcome change to the saga that is A Wheel of Time. It's short, digestible, coherent... and pretty much fixes all the issues I've been having with the current volumes in the main series that I'm reading. It's also a surprise to find what it is about: after being warned that it was full of spoilers for the main timeline I was excited to start it... only to find that a lot of it was pretty redundant. That doesn't make it a bad read - on the contrary in fact since it make it less vital and more of a pleasure. That said, I'm a bit reluctant to say too much in case it does spoil it for anyone reading.

I liked it, and in some ways I'm a little cautious of having to go back to the slog that is the main franchise - and yet it has me eager to continue on that journey. Which is pretty much the whole point of a prequel really, so the job's done here.