Warming Up

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Saturday 16th August 2003

Despite having pretty much entirely new staff every year and despite the fact that the menu presumably has altered a bit in the last ten years, the one constant in this ever changing festival is the smell in the Pasta bar at the Pleasance.
It's a very pervasive smell and one that unusually for a place that is serving food, extraordinarilly unpleasant.
Just smelling the food makes me feel nauseous, so one can only imagine what actually eating it will do. In fact I don't have to imagine as I have eaten there in the past and if memory serves me correctly it actually did make me ill.
I wouldn't go in there, but because few people know about it, and those that do are presumably put off entering because of the stink, it is much easier to get served for drinks in there than in any of the other overflowing bars at the Pleasance.
Amazingly a few people do go and eat the food (I can only imagine they have no sense of smell) but the Pasta bar is never going to build up a loyal following, mainly because a high proportion of its patrons will be (possibly coincidentally) killed by botulism within the week.
My tip to make the Pasta Bar into a success would be to turn it into some kind of gross-out theatrical experience. Charge people to enter and pay actors to eat the food in front of the astonished audience's face.
It already smells like one of those tourist attractions which has authentically created the smell of a medieval village sess pit.

So do go and visit it this year, for your last chance to experience this for free.