Big Eats

<< An Alan Partridge-style 'mock up' of the world's smallest (and most pretentious) restaurant

One of the worst things about being back at work, apart from the constant sense of unease and bitterness, and slow, inexorable increase in stress, is the journey. I know I've gone on ad nauseum before, but really, it's just too much. First off, it's the conditions. Platform 15 of Clapham Junction station has one type of weather - cold and windy, 365 days a year. I then transfer from this microclimate into a place that is always unbearably muggy, even on Christmas Eve - the Northern line. As if this wasn't bad enough, making this transition involves defeating my greatest nemesis - the ticket barrier at Balham tube that is prone to slamming shut when I'm halfway through it, causing pain and embarrassment in equal measure.

The worst thing, however, is when I try and go through the journey without headphones, or reading material. As hard as you try, you end up listening to other people's conversations - if I hear one more person say how they just can't be bothered to go to the gym tonight, I think I'll try and remove myself from the train while it's in full flight. Don't go to the gym then, I think over and over to myself. I've never been to a gym in my life - and I'm chunky but alive. It's particularly frustrating when I'm trying to pick up nuggets of useful information to end up with nothing but so much blather. Look what I'm stuck with today:

The world's biggest restaurant is in Syria.

The 6,000 seater jumbo eaterie is called Damascan Gate, and has swimming pools inside it and that. The smallest restaurant on Earth, meanwhile, is called Table for Two (there's a clue in the name) and is in Portland, USA. I can't imagine there's a smaller restaurant out there, unless a particularly Machiavellian chef is preparing food purely for his/her own consumption, and sits in a Soho restaurant on a lonely seat, scoffing his/her face in full view of a salivating public. It doesn't seem entirely implausible, but Table for Two wins for now. The question is - which would you prefer? The outlandish glitz and bustle of a cavernous Middle Eastern hangar, or the awkward silence and suffocating pretentiousness of a restaurant with only one table? Answers on a postcard to Knowledge Towers, Road to Learning, Big London, UK...