So how was it for you?: This week we've turned the tables and left restaurant reviewing to the diners. In Soho, London, Esther Oxford took the notes, Edward Sykes the pictures - I didn't really like the garlic ice-cream
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Your support makes all the difference.Garlic and Shots, 14 Frith Street.
Lisa and Gerard Fairtlough from Lewisham - artist and bio-chemist.
Anna Sahlstrom, from Gothenburg, with Eric Malmberg from Vaxjo.
'Beware of GARLIC' read the yellow notice in the restaurant window. Fitted snugly around it were hundreds and hundreds of garlic heads glowing in the pink fluorescent light. The framed menu listed 72 cocktail shots all made with garlic vodka. For dessert: a choice of garlic and Amaretto cheesecake or garlic honey ice-cream.
Gerard: 'Eric chose this restaurant because he is from Vaxjo, the same village as the three brothers who set this place up. He read about it in the Swedish papers. My wife and I consider ourselves brave and intrepid, so thought we would give it a try.
'I ordered Fiskgryta (mixed seafood with saffron aioli). I expected garlic bread to come with it, but it didn't. When I asked the waiter why not, he said: 'Why don't I get up in the morning?' But then, who said waiters have to be logical?'
Lisa: 'Not everything has got garlic in. The wine is garlic-free; so is the mineral water. I ordered a fish dish, and it was particularly delicious. I didn't really like the garlic ice-cream though, but then it could be just prejudice.'
Gerard: 'Yes, dear, it is prejudice. If you are going to go to a garlic restaurant, you have to go the whole hump.'
Whether there are 10 or 100 garlic cloves in a meal, the taste hardly varies, he says.
'Once we had eaten the garlic bread at the start of the meal, the garlic taste was not so obvious. Garlic is a strange phenomenon: it saturates the taste buds. I'm a biochemist; that is why I can say that.
'I would recommend Garlic and Shots to friends if they want to have fun and not be too serious. It has an unusual theme. I would say the whole thing is quite sadistic. That is why it is a success. Life is not supposed to be enjoyed.'
(Photograph omitted)
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