There are two reasons why you should never attempt to eat at the Fab Café.
Doesn't 'theme', much like a monkey enclosure at the Zoo, just mean a load of muck stuck to the walls and ceiling?
Firstly, that’d involve getting in the place. We tried twice (Sunday 5pm and Friday 2pm) to get through those impenetrable metal doors, forged in the fires of Mount Doom and bought on the cheap from Chenobyl, but to no avail.
Secondly, the menu consisting of Super Noodles (£1.30, various flavours), Heinz Breakfast-in-a-Can (£1.80, one of the better options), Smash instant mash (£3 with a giant Yorkshire pudding) and fish fingers with custard (£3, a Doctor Who thing apparently?) looks as appealing as an appraisal with your nephew Kim Jong-un.
As a general rule of thumb you should never start a review with a bunch of gripes. It’s discouraging. And as my colleague has just explained, a FAB regular through the years, it makes you come across as a right miserable acerbic bastard. Quite right.
She also explained that one of her friends was once chucked out of FAB for simulating sex with their life-size Dalek. Right. We'll leave that one for now.
Sexy Dalek, sad looking Wookie and some fish-warrior
Playing it safe the third time around we went along at 9pm on a Saturday night. Optimum bar hours. By this time I was ready to tear FAB a new one for making me visit thrice. But once in, try as I might, I cannot bring myself to be scathing about FAB. It’d be like punching Noel Edmonds. Yes he’s naff, badly dressed and clearly odd, but every so often he turns out to be quite fun. In small doses.
As does FAB. Once down in the belly of the beast you could be walking into a neon-splattered episode of The Big Bang Theory (an American sitcom based around a bunch of sci-fi nerds talking physics, Star Trek and not having sex - even with Daleks).
The belly
FAB claims to be the 'WORLD'S FIRST Television and Movie Themed Bar'. Bold but unlikely - despite the bar's longevity, its heritage stretching back into the 90s. The Yanks have been theming-stuff-good since Grease invented it. What constitutes a themed bar anyway? Haven't all bars got a theme of sorts? Doesn't 'theme', much like a monkey enclosure at the Zoo, just mean a load of muck stuck to the walls and ceiling?
If that is the case, then FAB have nailed it.
They have not, however, nailed the drinks.
The beers, mostly of the Calsberg lager ilk (£3.20) were largely unappealing (there was a pale and a bitter but they looked untrustworthy), while the cocktail menu, stuck to the back wall of the bar so they could slip things like 'Romulan' (some Star Trek baddie) into drink names, were God-awful. They were a bit like mixing battery acid with a packet of melted skittles, pouring it in to a small plastic picnic glass and then charging a fiver for the ordeal. It's sadomasochism for the tongue. Like celery.
When ordering a cocktail, if the barman (wearing a Batman t-shirt, naturally) looks scared and says, "Oh right. I've never made any of them," then leave it be. Have a gin. Have a Bovril. Have a bleach. Even have a Carlsberg. Have anything but a cocktail.
Gloop. £5
The tardis and some bloke asleep on that bald bloke from Mock The Week
'Television and Movie' is much too broad a term for FAB. This is shameless sci-fi kitsch: Toy spaceships dangle from the ceiling, a Tardis pulses in the corner, there's shoot-em-up arcade machines, posters for things you've never heard of, Pat Sharp's Fun House playing on TV, Commodores and Atari consoles locked away in a cabinet like crown jewels while the DJ (who tonight is the first ever Tracey Barlow from Corrie) sits in a dug-out cockpit with a space crew and a sad-looky Wookie painted on the wall behind.
To my right a bloke snaffles down Haribo with his pint from the bar-cum-tuck-shop like a greedy fat kid given too much pocket money for an after-school club down the Social.
The bar-cum-tuck-shopYou soon realise that FAB is very much like an after-school club: Toys, sweets, crisps, mischief, games consoles, cartoons and the whiff of awkwardness.
But one where you're allowed to get pissed. Which sounds dangerous, but when explored can be surprisingly entertaining even for those not into mounds of Sci-fi memorabilia. You have to award it marks for continuing to pull in the punters after all these years and despite those doors.
After all it's hard to rubbish anywhere that holds Star Wars evenings with 'light-saber battles and free cupcakes'. Notorious cupcake junkies those Jedi. Yoda used to mainline. That's why he ended up going cold turkey in a cave on the planet of Dagobah.
I wouldn't have used that reference before. Didn't even know it. By the bowcaster of Chewwie, it's contagious. Better leave in a flash (Gordon). But not before I give that Dalek a quick fondle, sexy mutant bugger. Lovely bumps.
You can follow @David8Blake here on twitter.
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
FAB Cafe, 109 Portland Street, City Centre, M1 6DN (website here).
Opening hours: 4.30pm-2am Mon-Thurs. 3pm-3am Fri-Sat. 6pm-1am Sun
Rating: 12.5/20 (please read the scoring system in the box below, venues are rated against the best examples of their kind)
Drinks: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 3/5
Eccentricity: 4.5/5
Some ladies satchel
A poster for some obscure sci-fi thing you've never heard of
Suitably sci-fi looking photo
