London - VQ

3am and drawn to the light like a mosquito to a light, we stumbled across VQ along the Fulham Road in Chelsea. We had heard great tales; tales of jaegerbombs and brownies at 8am, of pancakes and breakfast treats at 1am - the legend awaited us in all its shining glory. A 24 hour bistro with a full licence.

Indeed the stories were true - pancakes can be consumed any time of day - with ice cream or bacon depending on what you fancy and alcohol does indeed flow throughout the night and into the next day and through that night too and so forth.

One friend opted for the pancakes - a good choice, albeit at £9. As a typical fairly drunk recent graduate, all I really wanted was a plate of chips. After a bit of a wait what the 'chef' returned to me was not quite what I was expecting. I have to admit, 'Truffle oil chips with blue cheese dip' for £3.50 sounded like a bit of a steal. Rather than some slightly posh fluffy potato scrumptiousness, I was presented with a bowl of what were essentially ready salted crisps. No hint of truffle oil to be found. I paid £3.50 for a packet of crisps... I can't even use the excuse 'this is Chelsea after all', even for Chelsea that's a rip-off. The saving grace though was the blue cheese dip which was actually very tasty with my crisps. My friend however, was not so lucky, ordering 'rustic Italian bread' and receiving - yes, you guessed it - toast.

Attempting to find the least over-priced drink on the menu was fairly difficult, but I settled for a strawberry and mango iced tea which was incredible. Just what I needed.

Having queued to squeeze into this tiny restaurant-bar to receive sub-standard, well-marketed food we were already pretty peeved. The final nail in the coffin was when we received our receipt which was the first time we were told that we were paying for entry to the dive. Frankly, I wouldn't have minded if we'd had to pay on the door, but to deceive us up to the point of no return is fairly disgraceful.

Like the mosquito and the light, we'd been drawn in by the allure of the light, only to receive an unexpected death, the death being our money, which felt like it was being snatched from our hands (hypothetically of course - the staff were actually fairly pleasant). We walked towards the light and got our comeuppance. Don't make the same mistake.

A