Meat Liquor with Mother Teresa

“Hello, I’ve got a reservation for two under the name Patrick Kluivert.” I said to the waiter. I’d recently taken to using an alias when making bookings. If I wanted to be a successful food critic and get a fair trial of an establishment, I needed to refrain from using my real name to avoid tipping them off in advance and receiving special treatment. Unfortunately I had only realised this as I was calling to make a reservation, and in my panic had reached for the first name I could think of, which sadly happened to be that of late 1990s-mid 2000s Dutch footballing superstar, Patrick Kluivert.

“Yes, here we are. Right this way, Mr Kluivert.” Said the hostess. Thankfully the name hadn’t rung any alarm bells and I should be able to dine in anonymity. She seated me at my table to await my guest, who was evidently running late. Today I would be dining with the famous writer, Ernest Hemingway. The author of classic books such as The Old Man And The Sea, as well its significantly less classic follow-up titles, 2 Old Man 2 The Sea, and The Old Man And The Sea: Tokyo Drift, he lived a notoriously hedonistic lifestyle of excess, and so where better to take him than to rock and roll burger chain Meat Liquor.

Meat Liquor is a very in your face, unapologetic swathe of fat-laced high-end diner food. Hulking great burgers packed with juicy beef patties paired with sides richer than Macauley Culkin in the 1990s, and an alcohol menu that ranges from classic cocktails to hard milkshakes and pickleback shots. It’s a place of indulgence, the kind of place you come to forget you’re trying to diet because your body fat has been steadily creeping up all the time, despite you thinking you’re doing more exercise than ever and eating salads from Tossed for lunch twice a week, somehow the number just continues to creep up and you stop using the machine at the local Nuffield Health because what does it know anyway? It doesn’t know you, and everybody is different, right? It’s probably broken and just can’t tell the difference between fat and muscle. It’s the place you forget that and have a milkshake or five.

I sit at the table for a good half hour or so, continually checking my phone. Where the hell is Hemingway? He’s probably running late from another hedonistic meeting, and as we only have the table for a couple of hours, I decide to order for him in advance. I order a large portion of monkey fingers (chicken breast coated in batter and slathered in buffalo sauce) to share. To accompany this, I opt for the Dead Hippie Burger, which consists of two beef patties fried in mustard, the usual lettuce, cheese, onions etc, as well as their famous ‘dead hippie sauce’. Quite what this dead hippie sauce is remains a mystery, though the name makes you worry that years from now you’ll be on a Panorama documentary where they reveal that you were a willing accomplice in the Sweeney Todd situation you worried it was. For Hemingway, I choose the Tower Block Burger, a combination of fried chicken, cheese, jalapenos and a hash brown. I also order some chilli cheese fries, onion rings, a deep-fried mac ’n’ cheese to share, a black forest milkshake for me, as well as a chocolate milkshake and a classic martini for Hemingway. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the scream of the Nuffield Health body measurement machine. I continue anyway, to spite it for giving me what is actually probably a very accurate measurement of my BMI and body fat level, and add some hash browns to my order. This should be enough to keep us satisfied.

No sooner had I finished my order than the door swings open, and who is stood there other than…

Mother Teresa?

“Hello, I’m here with Patrick Kluivert.” Says Mother Teresa. She is ushered to my table. “You must be Patrick Kluivert.” She says, with a smile. Clearly she has little to no knowledge of that era of European football, which should come as no surprise I suppose. She doesn’t look the type to have owned a pair of Adidas Predators.

“Yes, sure.” I say, standing to greet her. “Where’s Hemingway?”

“Oh, he couldn’t make it in the end, so he sent me instead.” She says, as she takes a seat. “What are we having today?”

I look at the menu. How do you explain Meat Liquor, a restaurant with Satanic overtones and where the name is a euphemism, to an elderly Saint? “It’s called Burger Town.” I say. It’s easier this way. “Have you ever been to an American diner before?” She looks at me blankly. “They serve burgers, hot dogs, fries, that kind of thing.” The blank stare intensifies. “Well anyway, you’re going to love it.”

Teresa nods, and pours herself a glass of tap water. We sit facing each other for a while.

“So…” I say, lost for conversation. I am acutely aware that despite knowing of Mother Teresa, I have absolutely no idea what she did, as I hadn’t been expecting to meet her today. It must be something good, as she’s always held up as some kind of bastion of decency, but what that was I couldn’t say. Did she look after animals? No, wait, didn’t she heal the lepers? No, of course, she was the one who travelled back through time to find love! No, I realise, this was respectively St Francis of Assisi, Jesus of Nazareth, and Domhnall Gleeson in About Time. Alas, I have no idea whatsoever what she did, so I go with the same tried and tested gem of conversation as ever. “Have you seen Stranger Things?”

“I once saw an owl with the face of God.” She says.

“Ok, err… I mean I guess that’s technically a stranger thing. Tell me more.”

Mother Teresa begins to tell me the tale of the time she saw an owl with the face of God. I’m sure it’s a very interesting story, but I’m distracted by what’s going on elsewhere, as people are excitedly chattering and looking around the restaurant. I attempt to eavesdrop on one of the tables.

“No, really! I heard one of the waitresses say it!” Says one.

“I can’t see him anywhere.” Says the other, scanning the restaurant.

“Well they definitely said it. He’s here! Patrick Kluivert is here!” They say, excitedly.

Oh god. They had clocked the name after all, and now somehow they’d let it spill to the rest of the restaurant. I kept my head down. I knew I should have given a different name, like less well-known 1990s-mid 2000s Dutch footballer Boudewijn Zenden, or almost completely forgotten 1990s-mid 2000s Dutch footballer Wim Jonk. Alternatively, I could have gone with a name not based on the Dutch World Cup squad of France 1998, but for some reason that didn’t seem like an option right now.

“…and then it hooted ‘if you need me, I live in that barn over there. I may be omniscient, but if you could point me in the direction of some mice I’d really appreciate it’.” Continued Mother Teresa.

“What? Oh, sorry, yes, the God owl.” I said, as I snapped back to the table.

The conversation faded out, and we stared at each other in silence again. Several minutes passed. “Any holidays coming up?” I asked.

“No, nothing planned.” Said Mother Teresa. The conversation faded out again.

“Ok, look, I’m going to be honest with you.” I sighed. “I wasn’t expecting you today so I really don’t know much about you. Why don’t you tell me about your life?”

“Of course! I’d be glad to!” Said Mother Teresa. “I was born in Albania back in 1910. I always believed I had a higher purpose, to do God’s work, and so I devoted myself to a religious life from a very young age, leaving my family to pursue missionary work at the age of 18. I gave my life in service to the poor, founding the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 to care for all of those who felt unwanted, unloved or uncared for. We started with 13 of us, but by the time of my death we’d grown to over 4,000 members caring for people around the world. We opened orphanages, hospices, leper houses, at one point we even brokered a temporary peace between Israel and Palestine! In 1979 I was recognised with a Nobel Peace Prize, but the real achievement for me was always the sense of helping people and doing good.”

“Oh, wow, ok.”

“How about you?” She asked.

“Oh, you know, nothing special…” I said.

“All work has value in that it contributes to society and grants life a purpose.” Said Teresa, with a smile. “Tell me about what you do.”

“I work in advertising sales at Microsoft.” I sighed. Her face plummeted. “Have you heard of Bing?” She shook her head, which was actually a little bit of a surprise, as an 87 year-old who didn’t know how to change their default browser was typically our demographic.

“Ok, so you help charities to advertise their causes to the world?”

“Err… I guess it depends if you count Amazon as a charity.”

“The rainforest, of course!”

“Yes… the rainforest…” I said, as I gestured to the waitress to bring a shot of whisky or five.

Mother Teresa smiled a polite smile at me. Despite what she’d said, I feel like even she was slightly unsure whether my life had a purpose. Here was a woman who had devoted her life to fighting poverty, who abhorred the gluttonous greed of the wealthy who had so much when the poor had so little. It was this that made it infinitely more awkward when our food arrived.

“Ok, I’ve got some monkey fingers, a dead hippie burger, a Tower Block burger, some chilli cheese fries, onion rings, deep fried mac and cheese, hash browns, a black forest milkshake, and a classic martini?” Says the waitress, as she arrives with a feast that Henry VIII himself would be embarrassed by (I know this as we recently over-ordered at Wahaca and Henry was so mortified he left without playing Greensleeves).

“Is this ours?” Said Mother Teresa.

“Yes, it looks like they’ve made some kind of mistake with the ordering.” I said. “They must have misheard when I said ‘being alive is nourishment enough for me’. Since it’s here though, how about you have the Tower Block burger and we share the rest?”

Teresa nodded, and we began to tuck into our feast. The dead hippie burger is always a winner, juicy enough to require that the tables all be equipped with a kitchen roll, but still having enough flavour to ensure it’s not just juicy for the sake of being juicy. The mac and cheese balls too are superbly cheesy and somehow just work in the form of fried balls. The monkey fingers are good, but as a replacement for buffalo wings they do lack some of the crunch and flavour. I look over at Teresa as I take a sip of my milkshake. Her face is covered in strands of hash brown from her Tower Block burger. “Good?” I say. She nods, emphatically.

“Goodness, I would never have thought that a ring of onion could work so well in combination with a fried chicken burger, but somehow it does.” She says. “And this chocolate milkshake is such a blessing, so rich and chocolatey.”

“Excellent, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.” I said. We continued to crunch our way through our feast until there was nothing left.

“That was great, thankyou.” I said, as the waitress took our plates.

“Can we see the dessert menu?” Said Teresa, at this point making a bold claim to be the patron saint of food disposal.

“We’ll bring it shortly.” Said the waitress with a smile. “Is it your birthday today?”

“Me? No. Not today unfortunately.” Said Teresa.

“No, you.” She says, turning to me. “There’s a group of people over there who said it’s your birthday today.” She says, pointing. I turn to see a group of twenty Dutch football fans, all dressed in the familiar orange shirt. Oh god. “We’ve got to go.” I say to Mother Teresa, panicking as I stand up.

“Go now? But why?”

“Happy Birthday to you!” Sing the staff as they emerge from the kitchen, clutching a cake. “Happy birthday to you!” The whole restaurant begins to join in, their gaze following the staff as they begin to make their way towards the hidden celebrity. “Happy birthday, Patrick Kluivert!” They stop at our table. “Happy birthday to you!” The rest of the restaurant stops singing as everybody stares at a man who is quite clearly not Patrick Kluivert. A deathly hush descends over the restaurant, as I awkwardly blow out the candles on their signature Filth Pie, a concoction of Oreo, marshmallow, coconut and chocolate served with ice cream that I would be very excited about trying were the eyes of the restaurant not judging me for having pretended to be Euro 2000’s joint top-scorer.

“That’s not Patrick Kluivert!” Shouts a Dutch football fan.

“He’s a liar!”

“Boo!”

The entire restaurant begins to boo me, which to be honest I think is unfair, as they haven’t even read my review at this point. Without warning, Teresa stands up on a chair.

“Silence!” She shouts, the restaurant immediately quietening down. “How dare you boo this man! This man who works so hard to support the Amazon rainforest!” Again, I do not correct her. “And after all, who amongst us has not once pretended to be somebody they are not? Who amongst us has not once wished we could be somebody more famous, more confident, more impressive? So let us all forgive him, for ultimately are we not all frauds in the eyes of God?”

The restaurant nods solemnly, ashamed of themselves, and everybody sits back down to their own meals.

“That was amazing, thankyou.” I say to Mother Teresa. “You really are a saint, aren’t you? I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“I knew you weren’t Patrick Kluivert the whole time.”

“Really?”

She stands up and shows me her feet, revealing a pair of Adidas Predators. “Never judge a book by its cover.” She says, with a smile. She pulls a football from a bag and attempts to do some keepie-ups, performing them with all the skill and dexterity you’d expect of an 87 year-old Roman Catholic Saint, immediately losing her balance and crashing through a table. It seems like a fitting place to leave the review. Overall…

9/10 – Great burgers and sides.